BY FAIZAL KHAMISA – FAN FUEL BLOGGER
If you’re a fan of NCAA men’s basketball, this is your prime time. As casual fans quickly sift through articles and blogs to prepare yourself for perfection, they’ll stumble across a few names of players from some of the favourites in this year’s rendition of March Madness. You’ll see names like Olynyk, Pangos, Bennett, Stauskas and Bhullar come up more often than others because of their unique combination of skill, size and strength. But if you stop simply at stats you’ll fail to see where many top players in this year’s tournament come from.
The true north strong and free.
A total of 29 Canadians will lace up for a shot at the Final Four, and while the number is two less than the 2012 tournament, the impact of this year’s crop is as great as ever. In Kelly Olynyk and Anthony Bennett, you have nominees for player of the year and freshman of the year respectively. Nik Stauskas, the freshman shooting guard for Michigan can hit from downtown Detroit, while Sim Bhullar is a the true definition of a man. Seriously, he’s 7’5″ and 360 pounds.
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Canada has seen a record number of players find their ways to NBA teams in the last two years, many on the strength of successful March’s, but never has there been a crop like this.
According to number one ranked Gonzaga starting point guard Kevin Pangos in a recent interview with Sports Illustrated’s Kelli Anderson, the goals today are different.
“Guys are now seeing what it takes to play at the highest level and not accepting that we’re not a basketball country… You see guys like Tristan [Thompson] and Cory [Joseph] make it to the NBA and now that’s the goal instead of just making it to the NCAA.”
Pangos’ teammate Kelly Olynyk is perhaps the poster boy for no longer accepting simply making it to the NCAA. Olynyk played as a freshman two years ago, and found himself overmatched and undersized. He made the bold decision to red-shirt for an entire year in the hopes of gaining muscle and diversifying his skill. The year he sat out, while watching former teammate and fellow Canadian Robert Sacre earn a second round draft selection with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2012, helped him emerge into perhaps the NCAA’s most well-rounded player and a leading candidate for Player of the Year. Despite his NBA success, Steve Nash was never considered for the award in his time at Santa Clara University. While hardly an indicator of future success, it certainly bodes well for a country looking not only to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio di Janeiro, but also compete for a medal.
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The Toronto Raptors haven’t necessarily been a model NBA franchise during the course of their 17-year history. One playoff win, a bunch of missed draft picks and a plethora of coaching changes. Perhaps the team’s greatest influence, though, has been on a generation of Canadian kids looking to divert from the traditional hockey playing in this country. According to Statistics Canada, registration for the sport increased by nearly 40 percent between 1998 and 2005. With over 600,000 playing organized basketball across the country, it’s no surprise really to see the consistent success of this crop of players in the NCAA. The rise of Canadian talent in college ball can be directly related to the inception of the Raptors and even the Vancouver Grizzlies. Young fans were given an alternative to hockey and it looks like it’s paid off nearly a generation later.
Just hours before the NCAA selection committee announced the teams for this year’s tournament, the Raptors were being destroyed by the Miami Heat. The result was hardly a surprise; the Heat have now won 22 straight games. It was a meeting after the game that had Canadian basketball fans wishing they could fast-forward time. North America’s number one high school basketball player, Thornhill’s Andrew Wiggins, was waiting outside a locker room in the Air Canada Centre corridor. He had a meeting set up, but not with the Toronto Raptors. It was with the NBA’s best player LeBron James. Minutes before getting the invite inside the Heat locker room, Ray Allen came out to greet Wiggins, and humbled him, and probably a nation of eager fans, when he told the emerging star the Miami team was just talking about him in the locker room.
The future of Canadian basketball is bright. The emergence of Wiggins, and the crop of players in the NCAA make it more believable that Canada can indeed compete on the world stage in future years. But that’s three years away. Now, all eyes are on March Madness where it would come as no surprise if a Canadian kid was cutting down the net on April 8th.