JUSTIN DUNK
CFL.ca Staff
Four teams produced resounding wins in their respective conference finals. Calgary, Laval, McMaster and Acadia all won by 19 points or more, leaving no doubt that the four best teams in the country will play down for the chance to claim a national championship.
It will be a Friday night football doubleheader, CIS style. Acadia will play host to McMaster in Moncton – marking the first time ever a CIS semifinal will be played in New Brunswick – with the Uteck Bowl title on the line. Laval travels west to meet Calgary for a 2010 Vanier Cup rematch in the Mitchell Bowl.
Uteck Bowl (OUA at AUS)
Two programs will clash for the first time ever out east. McMaster and Acadia have never met on the Canadian university football gridiron – a match up the Western Mustangs were pretty confident would never happen.
You see, in September, Western went ahead and purchased a chartered flight to Moncton, of course, with the assumption they would be the team to prevail and represent Ontario in the national semifinals.
Instead, Wednesday morning, McMaster was the team who took the flight eastward, after the OUA said they would use the chartered plane if the Mustangs failed to claim the Yates Cup.
Fortunately for the Marauders, even though McMaster has never faced Acadia, their head coach Stefan Ptaszek has tasted victory over the Axemen before – he was the offensive coordinator for the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks during their 2005 Vanier Cup title run. That year, Ptaszek and the Hawks travelled to the east coast and laid a 31-10 beating on the Axemen to advance to the national final.
“It’s something that I’m a little bit more familiar with than the rest of the organization, that’s for sure,” Ptaszek said of his previous experience out east.
Coach ‘P’, as he is known in Canadian university football circles, believes he doesn’t have to over-complicate his game plan when leaving Ontario, where teams are very familiar with each other. With a short week for preparation because of the Friday night kickoff and travel time, Ptasek believes simplifying the plan of attack should help his Marauders.
“Out of conference you can just do what you do best and for us that means get the ball in our playmakers hands and go from there,” he said.
Aside from simplicity, when McMaster has the football, Ptaszek would like to limit the disruptions caused by Acadia interior defensive lineman Jake Thomas – the Axemen’s 6-2 275-pound J.P. Metras Trophy nominee, which is awarded annually to the outstanding lineman in the CIS.
Thomas has been a force in the middle, leading the country in tackles for loss with 16 and also managing to finish third in the CIS with nine sacks during the regular season. Number 49 for Acadia continued his elite level of play in the Axemen’s Loney Bowl win over St. Mary’s last Saturday, leading his team with six solo tackles, two tackles for loss and notching a sack as well.
“We have to be aware of him. We’re going to see if we can handle him one-on-one,” Ptaszek said of the fourth-year New Brunswick native.
“For us, we just can’t sit back and throw the ball a hundred times in the game. We have to run screens, draws, tosses, counters and zone. If we’re predictable and he can pin his ears back, he’s going to have lots of success.”
Meanwhile, in order for McMaster’s own defence to have success, they have to lick their wounds, put the pieces back together, after facing Western’s fierce ground game, and find a way to contain Acadia’s talented senior pivot, Kyle Graves.
“Their quarterback is an outstanding athlete. Big, strong, fast, good arm – he is very similar to Kyle Quinlan,” Ptaszek said. “We have to manage that quarterback, he is pretty special.”
Graves had 17 touchdown passes in eight regular season games, good for third most in the CIS, and he knows how to take care of the football, throwing just five interceptions all season.
And much like Quinlan, Graves likes to use his legs to chew up yardage for his offence, he rushed for three touchdowns in Acadia’s Loney Bowl triumph – both quarterbacks rushed for over 70 yards on 10 attempts in their respective conference championship games, each earning game MVP honours in the process.
In order for the Marauders to continue to have success on offence Quinlan must spread the football around and most importantly, get the football into the hands of the OUA’s MVP, just like he has done at a high proficiency rate all season.
“During the Yates Cup championship, Mike DiCroce was getting his touches and that needs to continue,” Ptaszek said.
On Friday evening, Quinlan and Graves, both senior starters at quarterback, will be vying to snap long national semifinal droughts and lead their respective schools back to the Vanier Cup. Acadia has not won a bowl game since 1981 and are 0-2 under head coach Jeff Cummins.
Meanwhile, McMaster has waited even longer than Acadia for their next bowl win. The Marauders, making their first bowl appearance with Ptaszek at the helm, are 1-4 in national semifinals, their lone victory coming all the way back in 1967, a 7-0 win over St. Francis Xavier, the only other time in the history of the program McMaster has travelled to the east coast.
Mitchell Bowl (RSEQ at CWAA)
For the third time in the last four seasons Laval and Calgary will meet on the national stage. However, the Rouge et Or will be the visiting team – Laval played Calgary at home in the 2008 Mitchell Bowl and 2010 Vanier Cup – as they head west to take on the Dinos.
Canada West teams have been tough to knock off when playing at home since the inception of the national semifinals in 1967. Teams from the West have put together a 17-2 record in bowl games played in their territory, including a current streak of 13 straight wins. Not to mention, Calgary reps a 3-0 mark when hosting CIS opponents at McMahon Stadium in the national semifinals.
“It’s a real hurdle that you have to overcome when you have to try to win on the road,” Dinos head coach Blake Nill said. “When you’re on the road it’s hard to prepare all the time, you don’t get in as much preparation as you want.”
One day before the Vanier Cup at PEPS Stadium last year, Nill had his team out on the field for a two hour practice because the team had lost precious prep time during the week leading up to the game.
Now on the other side of the coin, Laval, the visiting team, has decided to go the same route. Rouge et Or head coach Glen Constantin will put his team through a two hour practice on Thursday afternoon before they suit up and play for keeps on Friday night.
“It’s going to be somewhat advantageous for us to play at home, but we still have to prepare as best we can by familiarizing ourselves with their formations and tendencies,” Nill, who this time around has the luxury of an uninterrupted week of practice, said.
It will simply be a matter of determination on Friday night. Both teams are built to play football deep in November: each squad is consistently productive running the football and can stop a strong ground game, boasting physical front sevens on defence.
However, Laval is especially stingy against the run. The Rouge et Or, led by middle linebacker and highly rated CFL prospect Frederic Plesius, allowed just over 53 yards per game on the ground to opponents during the regular season. However, in two post-season games, teams have found a few more holes in the Laval defence, rushing for 89 yards per contest.
“We’re looking at games against Montreal and Concordia and we see things that we feel we’ve got to try and exploit,” Nill said of Laval’s two playoff opponents.
Heading the rushing attack for each team, Sebastien Levesque with Laval and Steven Lumbala in Calgary, are a couple of running backs that were the only two rushers in the country to average eight plus yards per attempt on 100 or more regular season carries. Both have bettered there per rush average in the post-season and each back is coming off a 190-yard effort in their respective conference championship game.
“We have to go with our strength, and our strength at Calgary is our offensive line and running backs,” Nill said.
Calgary doesn’t just lean on Lumbala, their offensive backfield is full of options. Matt Walter, a fifth round CFL draft pick of the Calgary Stampeders earlier this year, has rushed for over 4,000 yards in his CIS career and Anthony Woodson, a former All-Canadian, help to provide the Dinos with lots of depth at the running back position.
Not to mention the running ability of Calgary’s starting quarterback Eric Dzilewski – the CIS rookie of the year in 2010 – who had 101 yards and four scores along the ground in the Dinos 62-13 romp over UBC last week to claim the Hardy Cup.
Whoever is running the ball for Calgary is fortunate to run behind one of the best offensive line groups – anchored by future CFLer Kirby Fabien – in the country, and that unit will need to be playing at a high level against Laval on Friday night.
“Our offensive line we think is the strength of our program,” Nill said. “It’s going to be in their hands and it’s going to be tough. They’ve always got a great defence at Laval and we’re just going to have to match our strength against theirs.”
Nill feels his team matches up well physically with Laval, but of the utmost importance for the Dinos will be their mental makeup facing a Rouge et Or squad who has beaten them by a combined score of 88-12 in their past two meetings.
“We have to come to the realization and believe that this team can be beat,” Nill said.
Expect the 2011 Mitchell Bowl to be a knock down, drag ‘em out, smash mouth, throw back style of football, with the team who can withstand the physical pounding the best over 60 minutes, earning a ticket to Vancouver and the right to play in the 47th Vanier Cup.