And we’re down to the final four. If you asked any CIS insider, nobody would have forecasted these four teams. Yet that’s how quickly things can change in the topsy turvy world of CIS football.
For the first time since 2007 and for only the second time in 15 years, only one league champion is back in the CIS Bowl games for a second straight campaign. The Manitoba Bisons and Mount Allison Mounties will play their bowl games on the road for the first time in their programs’ history. This weekend will mark the first-ever matchups between Montreal and Manitoba, as well as McMaster and Mount Allison. Both Montreal and Manitoba looked like pretenders rather than Vanier Cup contenders in Week 1, when the Carabins lost by 27 to Laval and the Bisons fell by 20 to the Huskies. As the road to the 50th Vanier Cup continues, these are the keys to victory for the four teams.
Mitchell Bowl
Mount Allison – Most people have the Mounties as a heavy underdog but I wouldn’t be so confident. The last time they lost a game was this time last year and they challenged the RSEQ champion Laval in their CIS Bowl matchup much more than the OUA champion Western Mustangs challenged Calgary. Mount Allison has had two weeks to rest and prepare as their conference championship was a week earlier than the rest of the CIS’s. They are probably the healthiest team left playing as they also had a bye week shortly before that for the AUS semifinals. On defence, their strength is their linebacking corps and secondary, which will be put to the test, as they’ll see more early-down five-receiver packages from McMaster than any of their previous AUS opponents.
McMaster – The Marauders are hoping to get to their third Vanier in the last four years. Their biggest strength is experience. No other team still playing has any players with Vanier experience and Mount Allison is the only other club featuring players who have been to a CIS bowl game. MAC, on the other hand, boasts 11 starters who played in their 2011 Vanier Cup triumph. For the first time since 2011, the team finished the year with healthy players in the offensive backfield with Wayne Moore and Chris Pezzetta as a nice 1-2 punch to navigate the bad weather expected in Hamilton this weekend.
Uteck Bowl
Manitoba – The Bisons have the only Vanier Cup title by a Canada West team in the past 16 years. With a 4-4 regular season record they are by far the biggest Cinderella story of the bunch. The Bisons are hoping to make history, becoming the first unranked team to win the Vanier Cup. They may not have been ranked to end the year but since the year ended they’ve been slaying ranked opponents. In the last three weeks they’ve defeated Calgary twice and Saskatchewan once, the last two wins being on the road. If they are going to get another road win this weekend they are going to have to once again dominate the turnover battle. The Bisons defence and special teams forced 10 turnovers against Calgary in the Hardy Cup. More impressively, Manitoba didn’t commit a turnover themselves. The recipe for Uteck Bowl success is exactly the same.
Montreal – The Carabins captured their first Dunsmore Cup in program history last week, ending Laval’s streak of 11 straight titles. That’s just a few weeks after ending Laval’s 25-game winning streak during the last game of the regular season. The biggest difference in the 2014 Carabins has been the play of QB Gabriel Cousineau. One of the most accurate intermediate passers in the CIS, Cousineau put up 312 yards against Laval’s stingy secondary. More impressively, despite going to the air 38 times in the Dunsmore, Cousineau had zero turnovers. No team’s success is more tied to one player’s performance than the Carabins are to Cousineau’s.