Men’s Basketball Season Recap 2006-07

The Laurentian Voyageurs basketball team started off the year with a wild pre-season that included opponents from the OCAA, CIS and NCAA. It all began on September 3rd when a club team of Voyageurs travelled to Ottawa to take on NCAA division I opponents Lasalle University and the University of Louisville. Unfortunately, the club team was unable to come away with a victory, however, were able to take some momentum into their next three pre-season games.

The Voyageurs then put together a string of three victories over the Georgian Grizzlies, Concordia Stingers and Saskatchewan Huskies with the latter two giving the Voyageurs a tournament championship at the Concordia Invitational. Unfortunately, the rest of the pre-season went downhill as the Laurentian men went 1-4 against Waterloo, Memorial, Ottawa, Lake Superior State, and Weber State. The Voyageurs finished the pre-season with a 4-6 record.

The struggles would continue long into the first half of the OUA regular season for the Voyageurs as they would have to wait until November 25th to get their first win of the regular season against the Lakehead Thunderwolves in Thunder Bay. The Laurentian men then looked to build a three game winning streak with wins over Western and Windsor. The Voyageurs were only able to get a split on the final weekend of the first half and headed into the mid-season break sitting in seventh place in the OUA east division with a record of 2-8.

The second half of the season started much like first with the Voyageurs struggling only taking one win in their first eight second half games. However, there were some promising moments as the Voyageurs took a game from the RMC Paladins on the road and played the number one ranked Carleton Ravens closely at the Ben Avery Gym, eventually losing 74-65.

With six games remaining the Voyageurs were in trouble sitting on the outside of the playoffs, however, with five of those games coming in the friendly confines of the Ben Avery Gym they could not be counted out. Down the stretch the Voyageurs split two out of three of the weekends with the biggest split coming in the Toronto, Ryerson weekend. The Voyageurs dropped the Ryerson Rams on the Friday night, earning themselves a tie with Ryerson for the last playoff spot as well as the tie breaker between the two teams. Thankfully, the Rams final two games shadowed the Voyageurs with both teams losing a pair against their traveling partners. The Laurentian men finished the season with a 6-14 record and earned themselves an OUA quarter-final match at the University of Toronto.

The Voyageurs prepared to do battle with the Varsity Blues, a team that they lost in overtime just two weeks earlier at the Ben Avery Gym. In the end the Blues showed their skill and ability to be superior and took the OUA quarter final game 77-58.

With the season ended the Voyageurs said goodbye to senior player Brody Bishop and student assistant coach and ex-player Aaron Sidenberg.

On the whole, the Voyageurs finished the 2006-07 season with a 4-6 pre-season record, 6-16 regular season record and a 0-1 playoff record tallying an overall record of 10-23.