CFL.ca Staff
OTTAWA — A pair of dream match-ups are set for Saturday’s CIS football national semifinals.
At Richardson Stadium in Kingston, Ont., the top-ranked and defending Vanier Cup champion Laval Rouge et Or (9-1) square off against the No. 4 Queen’s Golden Gaels (9-1) in the Mitchell Bowl.
The duel between the QUFL and OUA champions gets under way at 1 p.m. Eastern and is live on TSN and Radio-Canada.
At Huskies Stadium in Halifax, the No. 2 Calgary Dinos (9-1) visit the No. 6 Saint Mary’s Huskies (8-1) in the Uteck Bowl.
The much-anticipated affair between the Canada West and AUS champions kicks off at 1 p.m. Atlantic and can be seen on TSN at 4 p.m. Eastern.
The winners advance to the Desjardins Vanier Cup, Saturday, November 28 in Quebec City, live on TSN and Radio-Canada.
The Rouge et Or, who last year captured an unprecedented fourth national title in six years, go into the weekend with the best Bowl record among the four contenders with five wins in eight tries since their first semifinal appearance in 1999. The Dinos are 5-4 all-time, the Huskies 9-11 and the Gaels 4-7.
Laval and Queen’s have never met in the postseason but battled five time in conference play between 1996 and 2000 when they were part of the defunct OQIFC. The Rouge et Or had a 3-2 advantage including wins in the last three meetings.
Calgary and Saint Mary’s have met three times on the national stage including a pair of Bowl games at Huskies Stadium. The Dinos prevailed in the 1988 Vanier Cup in Toronto (52-23), the Huskies took the 1992 Atlantic Bowl (21-11) and Calgary won 37-23 in the most recent rendez-vous, the 1993 Atlantic Bowl.
Saturday’s Mitchell Bowl sees Laval’s CIS-leading defence go head-to-head against an explosive Queen’s offence that lit up Western for 43 points and 598 yards last Saturday in one of the most exciting Yates Cup finals in recent history.
The Rouge et Or led the nation for least points allowed for the second straight season and the fifth time in seven years in conference play, allowing only 61 points in eight contest (7.6 per game). Laval’s D was number one in CIS both against the pass (162.4 yards per game) and the run (76.9 per game).
The Quebec champions’ offence was no slouch either finishing second in the country with 333 points (416 ppg), a mere two points behind Western (41.9 ppg).
Reigning Hec Crighton trophy winner Benoit Groulx was as good as ever in 2009 en route to his third QUFL MVP title. The fifth-year senior from Montreal had an 18-3 touchdown-to-interception ratio in conference play – his 18 TDs tied for the nation’s lead – and has been intercepted in only one of nine overall games. He had a CIS-best 73.2 completion percentage, marking the fifth time in five seasons he’s led the nation in that category.
His counterpart on Saturday, fellow fifth-year senior Dan Brannagan, simply had one of the best seasons in CIS history. The Burlington, Ont., native was second in the nation averaging 369 passing yards per outing over seven conference matches and finished his career second on the all-time list with 10,714 yards. In the OUA final, he racked up 515 yards and five TD passes to lead the Gaels to a 43-39 win over archrival Western and a first Yates Cup title since 1978.
Queen’s is making its first national semifinal appearance since a 23-16 Churchill Bowl win over Guelph in 1992. That victory was followed by a 31-0 shutout of Saint Mary’s for the program’s third and last Vanier Cup triumph.
Laval travels to Kingston with a 1-3 all-time road record in Bowl games. The Rouge et Or have lost semifinals away from home to Saint Mary’s in 2007 and Saskatchewan in 2005 since beating McMaster in Hamilton in 2003.
The storyline of the Uteck Bowl is of course the return of Calgary head coach Blake Nill and all-star quarterback Erik Glavic to Halifax.
Nill had a phenomenal record in eight campaigns at the helm of the Huskies before taking over the U of C program in 2006. From 1998 to 2005, he had a 61-20 mark overall and led the team to six AUS championships, four Bowl wins and a pair of Vanier Cup titles in 2001 and 2002.
Glavic captured the Hec Crighton trophy as a sophomore in his final season at Saint Mary’s in 2007, when he helped the Huskies score a huge upset over Laval in the Uteck Bowl before being sidelined with a knee injury that would keep him out of the Vanier Cup final and almost the entire 2008 schedule.
The native of Pickering, Ont., has been nothing short of sensational this fall in his first year with the Dinos. He claimed Canada West MVP honours, led Calgary to a 7-1 conference record – the program’s best since 1988 – and was at his best in the Hardy Cup final passing for 479 yards and three touchdowns and adding another 106 yards and one TD on the ground in a 39-38 come-from-behind road win over No. 3 Saskatchewan.
Calgary’s high-flying offence, which ranked third in the nation with 39.5 points per game and racked up a CIS-best 283 rushing yard per outing, doesn’t stop with Glavic however.
Matt Walter, last year’s Canada West MVP, was second in the country with 1,103 yards on the ground, while Anthony Parker (46 receptions, 816 yards) and Nathan Coehoorn (41 – 765) were among CIS leaders in all receiving categories.
Saint Mary’s counters with an exceptional defensive unit that ranked third in CIS in conference play allowing only 14.9 points per game and was second against the pass holding opponents to 174 yards per duel through the air.
In his first full season as the starting quarterback, Jack Creighton of Buffalo, NY, was solid if not spectacular averaging 233 yards per outing while throwing only six interceptions.
Should the affair come down to a last-minute field goal, the Huskies know they can count on fourth-year veteran Justin Palardy, who led the nation with 23 field goals and 96 points in 2009 while rewriting the AUS records book.
Saint Mary’s is 3-0 at home in national semifinals since a 40-36 loss to Regina in 2000. Calgary is looking for a first Bowl win since 1995 – the Dinos’ last Vanier Cup year – and a first CIS semifinal victory on the road since 1993 against the Huskies.
