The Royals Face The Trojans
For the first time in school history the Douglas Royals will meet the SAIT Trojans in Thursday's quarterfinal.
The Douglas Royals are at the big dance for the first time since the 2008 season when they won national gold.
They will open the CCAA national championship in Laval, Quebec against the SAIT Trojans on Thursday at 5:30pm PST. The Royals are coming off an upset win over the VIU Mariners in the PACWEST championship and are hoping to continue along the same path when the meeting the ACAC champions.
The Royals feature a stifling defence that doesn’t allow easy shots, or uncontested rebounds. They are led by a veteran group including PACWEST championship MVP Grant Campbell in his final season. He scored 14.9 points and a game and over four assists.
Their offence scores by committee and has proven to be difficult for teams to guard all the weapons. Reese Morris, Noah DeRappard-Yuswack, Kameron Johnson and Ethan McKean play major parts on their offence and will need to contribute each game.
The Trojans (16-5) offensively are very talented led by All-Canadian Murphy Beya. He scored 15.8 points a game and grabbed over 10 rebounds. Nicholas Molina could also be a pain for the Royals as he drops in over 15 a game.
They successfully defended the ACAC crown by getting past the Lakeland Rustlers in the conference final 88-77. That said they were very fortunate after playing a pair of overtime games to get to the gold medal tilt.
In their seven previous stops at the Nationals the Royals are 13-7 and they will look for more beginning on Thursday.