Ryan Reisert

Ryan Reisert

Love Competition Hall may be McGill’s home court, but it didn’t feel that way this past weekend. Hoops fans from six other schools invaded the gym to cheer on their teams in the 17th annual McGill Redbird Basketball Classic. While McGill fans were few and far between, numerous supporters of the St. Francis-Xavier X-Men showed up and left happy as the X-Men took the men’s title, defeating all three teams they played. In the women’s tournament, the Regina Rams took home the honours with a 2-1 record.

Although this was only a preseason tournament, both the Redmen and Martlets learned that they have a lot of work to do if they want to compete with Canada’s best in the regular season. The Redmen dropped all three of their games, while the Martlets salvaged only one victory over the Brock Badgers.

The Redmen were without two familiar faces throughout the tournament, which may have contributed to their poor display. Head Coach Dave D’Aveiro was on leave after being selected to work as an assistant coach for Team Canada at the Pan-Am Games in Mexico. Assistant coach John Dangelas filled in for D’Aveiro. McGill also felt the loss of Simon Bibeau, who sustained a season-ending knee injury in practice.

“We’re trying to work things out now, ever since we lost Simon for the season,” Coach Dangelas said. “We just have to continue to work to get better, watch lots of film, and figure things out to make strides in the right direction.”

The Redmen were unhappy with their performances on Friday and Saturday night as they lost to McMaster and St F.X. by scores of 68-52 and 90-71. On Sunday afternoon, McGill played the University of Toronto Varsity Blues and put in their best performance of the weekend in a hard fought 64-59 defeat. Second-year McGill forward Tristan Renaud-Tremblay was named to the tournament all-star team after averaging 15 points and six rebounds over the course of the weekend.

The Martlets were more successful, winning their tournament opener 64-60 over Brock. Third-year shooting guard Marie-Eve Martin led the way with 14 points in just 20 minutes on the court. Martin noted that the Martlets did many things right in their three games.

“Overall, I think we got better as a team, we’re all thinking positive[ly],” Martin said. “[But] we lost a big player against Regina.” That big player was fourth-year power forward Anneth Him-Lazarenko, who, despite her injury, was named a tournament all-star. The Martlets weren’t as successful in their final two games and fell 82-74 to Regina and 55-52 to the Carleton Ravens despite a furious second half comeback. Head Coach Ryan Thorne was impressed by his team’s performance against some of the nation’s best. “We set up our preseason to play Top-10 teams, and that’s who we played,” Thorne said. “We can play with any team in the country.”

Both the Redmen and Martlets will now head south of the border to continue their exhibition schedules. The men will face tough competition against Cincinnati, a six-seed that made it to the round of 32 in last year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The women travel to Ithaca, NY to face the Cornell Big Red who finished 6-22 overall in 2010-2011. Both teams open their regular season on Nov. 10 against Concordia.