Mariners Battle Bearcats

#4 CBC Bearcats vs. #1 VIU Mariners – Friday February 28, 3:00pm | WATCH HERE

The first of two men’s semi-finals tips off on Friday afternoon when the Bearcats meet the top seeded Mariners with a berth in the gold medal game on the line.

As the top seed in the Conference, the Mariners earned a bye into the semifinal and watched the Bearcats play a sound, balanced game in the quarterfinal beating the Langara Falcons 78-71 to advance.

These two have not seen each other since early January, although the Mariners won all four regular season meetings this year with the closest margin of victory, just seven points which came at CBC on January 10^th.   The other three final scores were not as close as the Mariners’ margin of victory was 37 points.

 During the regular season the Mariners offence was very balanced led by the PACWEST Player of the Year in Kameron Bender who dropped over 18 points a game. As a team they scored over 90 points and shot almost 45% from the field.  They hit the century mark offensively seven times this past season, twice against the Bearcats.

Thursday afternoon the Bearcats recorded the program’s first playoff win since winning a quarterfinal game in 2008 against the Mariners oddly enough. They had good balanced production up and down their lineup shooting 43% and didn’t allow many easy shots on the defensive end.

This will no doubt be a fast-paced contest with speedy guards on both sides of the ball highlighted by Bender from the Mariners and the combination of D’Andre Palmer-Ormsby and Cam Carter on the Bearcats side.

The winner advances to the gold medal game while the loser will play for bronze on Saturday.