CFL.ca Staff
OTTAWA — The stage is set for the CIS national semifinals and if last weekend’s conference championship games are any indication of things to come, football fans are in for quite a thrill on Friday night.
The Uteck Bowl will see two unfamiliar foes square off for the first time in history. The fourth-ranked McMaster Marauders (9-1) visit the No. 9 Acadia Axemen (8-1) at Moncton Stadium, which will mark the first-ever CIS semifinal played in the province of New Brunswick.
The game will air countrywide on TSN and RDS at 7:30 p.m. Atlantic Time.
The winner will advance to the 47th Vanier Cup championship on Friday, Nov. 25 at B.C. Place Stadium in Vancouver, also on TSN and RDS (6 p.m. Pacific).
The Marauders are coming off back-to-back dominating wins in the OUA playoffs, 40-13 over No. 8 Queen’s in the semis and 41-19 on the road against No. 3 Western in the 104th Yates Cup final. During the regular season, they ranked first in CIS in both total offence (530.5 ypg) and passing offence (329.9), while placing fourth in rushing (200.6) and fifth in points scored (34.6 ppg).
Crowned in Ontario for the first time since 2003, McMaster is led offensively by the dynamic duo of quarterback Kyle Quinlan, a first-team OUA all-star, and wideout Michael DiCroce, the league MVP. Quinlan was first in the country with 341.6 passing yards per outing, while DiCroce topped all CIS receivers with 904 yards (113.0 ypg). In the Yates Cup, the pair connected for a 102-yard pass-and-run play, an OUA playoff record.
In order to advance to the national final for only the second time in school history and the first since 1967, the high-flying Marauders will have to go through the “Wolfville Wall.”
Led by all-conference defensive tackle Jake Thomas, who tied for the CIS lead with 16 tackles for a loss and finished third with nine quarterback sacks, Acadia ranked third in the country in points allowed (13.5 ppg), total defence (307.2 ypg) and passing defence (209.2) and was fifth against the run (98.0).
The Axemen and star quarterback Kyle Graves, the conference MVP, remained in the shadow of perennial powerhouse Saint Mary’s for most of the season and weren’t ranked in the CIS Top 10 until the last two polls of the campaign, when they earned back-to-back nods at No. 9.
Their coming-out party came in the penultimate week of the regular schedule, when they beat the Huskies 41-28 to clinch first place in the AUS standings. They confirmed their domination in the Loney Bowl final with an impressive 39-20 victory over the defending four-time league champions.
Quite the turnaround for a team that hadn’t enjoyed a winning season in four years, including a 2-6 campaign in 2009 and a 1-7 mark in 2008.
Whatever the outcome Friday night at Moncton Stadium, one team will put an end to a long CIS semifinal drought.
McMaster’s only Bowl win dates back to 1967 – 7-0 over StFX in the inaugural Atlantic Bowl – and the Marauders have since dropped four straight national semis, losing at the Final Four every season from 2000 to 2003.
Acadia is 4-7 all-time in Bowl games and has lost five in a row since a 40-14 home win over Queen’s in 1981.
-With files from the CIS
