Holly Stewart

Through three quarters, Laval was so hot from the field that it’s excusable if anyone thought they were the cause of the alarms ringing in Currie Gym. The culprit was in fact a faulty detector, but that didn’t stop the entire complex from being evacuated for 20 minutes while the fire department searched the premises. Even that reprieve from the Rouge-et-Or bombers wasn’t enough for the Martlets, as they fell behind by 16 soon after play resumed, en route to a devastating 72-68 upset loss at the hands of the visiting team.

Laval took the RSEQ playoff field by storm, coming in as the fourth seed and ending the tournament as Quebec champions. The Rouge et Or beat both number-one ranked McGill and number-two UQAM, earning a spot in the CIS National Championships in the process.

After the loss, the Martlets applied for an at-large berth to the Western Regionals in hopes of winning their way into Nationals. The University of Victoria was selected instead, ending McGill’s season.

There were danger signs from the opening tip, as the Martlets looked nervous and disjointed.

“I think it was probably the emotion of the moment,” said Head Coach Ryan Thorne. “We got caught up in that, so we weren’t connecting, we weren’t on the same page, we weren’t doing the things we normally do.”

This was manifested on offence by over-passing, rushing shots (the Martlets shot 10.3 per cent from three on the game), and poor clock management. But it was on defence where the team really struggled.

“We gave up too many points,” said Thorne. “We don’t usually give up 70 and we gave up 72 … [Laval] played solid, they shot well from the three-point line. 52 per cent in the first half, so they hit some shots, [but] we left them open on bad rotations.”

Despite the disparity in their regular season records, Laval looked like the more poised and confident team. The presence of twin towers Marie-Michelle Genois and Marie-Pascale Nadeau might have had something to do with that. With a combined height of 12’4″, their presence in the middle provided Laval with a backbone on defence and a means to attack McGill’s shorter frontcourt.

No Martlets will graduate this year, so the 2011-2012 team will be equipped to come back and make a deeper playoff run.