The University of Ottawa Gee-Gees have the opportunity to pull off an extremely rare feat this weekend, as both the men’s and women’s basketball teams will compete in the national collegiate championship with a shot of bringing two Canadian titles back to the nation’s capital.
For the first time, both the men’s and women’s final tournaments, featuring the top eight teams in Canada, will take place concurrently at the same location. This year, the University of British Columbia will welcome the country’s best college hoops players to Vancouver for the four-day tournament, which gets underway on Thursday.
Outside the host school, the Gee-Gees are the only university to qualify for the men’s and women’s championships, as both teams won their respective provincial titles last weekend.
On the women’s side, Ottawa enters the tournament as the second-seed, behind only the University of Saskatchewan, which are the western Canada champions and have only lost two games all year.
The tournament’s third-seed are the Carleton Ravens, which went undefeated during the entire regular season and playoffs, before being upset in the Ontario championship game by the Gee-Gees.
The University of Ottawa will take on seventh-seeded Laval on Thursday in a one-game sudden death match-up, while the Ravens play Bishop’s University, who won Quebec’s provincial title.
If both Ottawa schools win their opening games, they will face each other in the national semifinals on Saturday.
Meanwhile, on the men’s side, the Gee-Gees are the tournament favourites and will play their opening game against the eighth-seeded Concordia University, also on Thursday.
Neither the men’s nor women’s basketball programs at the University of Ottawa have ever won a Canadian championship.
The last time a school won both national titles was in 2023, when Carleton swept both the men’s and women’s tournaments. However, a dual championship had not occurred before 2023 for the past several decades.
The Carleton men’s team failed to qualify for the national championship, after losing in the opening rounds of the provincial playoffs for the second-consecutive year.
