Banner Season: Latest champions Queen’s, Ottawa look to double down on recent titles
Burlington, Ont. – The two most recent champions are set to compete for the latest Wilson Cup title, but only one of the Ottawa Gee-Gees or Queen’s Gaels can double down on their recent success with another OUA men’s basketball title in 2025.
Despite both teams’ recent triumphs, the latest edition of the banner season event will feature several new faces for both sides, including a revamped Queen’s roster that has seen an award-winning rookie play a leading role for the Tricolour.
Ollie Engen, a first-year guard from Kingston, has made an immediate impact on his new squad. The OUA rookie of the year and first team all-star finished fifth in the league in scoring, registering 18.8 points per game. He has continued that strong scoring touch into the postseason as well, averaging 23 points per postseason contest including a game-high 26 against Ontario Tech last weekend.
And while Engen has found success in his foray onto the varsity scene, his teammate, Luka Syllas, has been a longstanding performer therein. The senior checked in right behind Engen with 17.4 points per game, good for ninth in the league, and was just as impactful on the defensive end. Last year’s top defensive player in the OUA was once again tasked with shutting down the opposition’s top scoring threats, and the second-team all-star will need to be in fine form on both ends of the floor to help his Gaels overcome the balanced Gee-Gees attack.
Ottawa enters as the fourth-best offensive team at 82.9 points per game. They make a league-best 10.3 three-pointers per contest, doing so at a 34.2% success rate. Where the Gee-Gees really hang their hat, however, is on the defensive end. The Garnet and Grey are the stingiest in points against at just 65.9 allowed per game, in addition to top-five marks in opponents field goal percentage (34.9%; 1st in OUA), blocks per game (5.8; 1st in OUA), steals per game (10.1; 4th in OUA), and opponents’ turnovers per game (16.4; 4th in OUA).
Anchored this shut down effort is the OUA’s defensive player of the year, Jacques-Mélaine Guemeta. A threat on both ends of the floor, the civil engineering major from Douala, Cameroon racked up 38 steals and was a vaunted presence as part of the team’s perimeter defence. But on top of that, he also saw a statistical surge offensively this year, putting up 15.3 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 2.4 assists per game, leading the team in the former two and ranking second in the latter.
When it comes to the team’s top distributor, the veteran Dragan Stajic has been among the best in the conference. He dished out 5.3 assists per game, good for fourth in the OUA and became the program’s all-time leader in the category as well. Not only does the Waterloo, Ont. product get his teammates involved, but he makes good decisions and takes care of the ball while doing so, setting a new known national record in career assist-to-turnover ration (2.9) as well. For good measure, the first team all-star also paced the province in three-point shooting, hitting over 50% of his shots from beyond the arc.
Both of these players were a part of the Gee-Gees’ 2022-23 Wilson Cup win, combining for 23 points therein, but were also key to Ottawa’s two wins over Queen’s this season. The two finalists didn’t meet until the end of January this season, but two of their final five games came head-to-head, including their respective season finales.
The first meeting saw Ottawa jump out to a big lead through three quarters en route to a 95-82 win. Engen led the way for the Gaels in that one with 23 points, while Ottawa had four players reach double digits, including a game-high 24 from Ankit Choudhary and 15 points off the bench from Khalifa Koulamallah.
In the encore, just two weeks later, it was a tale of two halves. Ottawa built up a 21-point cushion at the break, but a 25-8 margin in the third quarter helped Queen’s close the gap. Ultimately, the Gaels fell by five, but without their all-star rookie in the lineup, saw meaningful contributions from Tyson Lama (15 points), AJ Cummings (14 points), and Aaron Tennant (12 points). Ottawa, meanwhile, was led by 18 points from Justin Ndjock-Tadjore.
While the vaunted Gaels offence wasn’t able to overcome the tenacious Ottawa defence in those two meetings, they did find plenty of success on the year overall. Led by their all-star duo, Queen’s posted 92.1 points per game on nearly 34 made field goals and over 78 attempts. They were among the league leaders in attempts from the field, beyond the arc, and at the charity stripe, while also making good on those opportunities at top-five rates. They also managed this high level of success with precision ball movement, registering 18.5 assists per game (3rd in OUA).
Queen’s has needed every one of those key field goals, passes, and stops thus far in their postseason run, as they’ve reeled off two straight one-possession victories. They first took down Carleton, 86-63, in the quarterfinals, before edging the Ridgebacks in the penultimate round by a 64-62 margin.
It has been a different story for the Wilson Cup hosts; however, who have reeled off wins against Laurentian and TMU, respectively, by an average margin of 32 points on the backs of team-wide contributions in both.
But when it comes to a winner-take-all finale, what matters most is the 40 minutes ahead. Both teams have been on the stage before and know what it takes to win, whether that victory came via a 20-plus point margin or on a buzzer-beating three ball that leads to a court storm. This latest chapter of the Wilson Cup history books remains to be written, but one of the Queen’s Gaels or Ottawa Gee-Gees will get to relive that familiar winning feeling in the nation’s capital on Saturday.
