Sam Reynolds

The McGill Redmen defeated the Niagara Purple Eagles 78-71 on Saturday evening, improving their record to 2-4 against NCAA Division I opponents this pre-season. This is the first time the Redmen have posted consecutive victories against American teams in seven years spent competing against teams from south of the border.

The Redmen’s biggest strength in the victory was their ability to spread the ball around, as four players reached double digits in points on the evening. Tristan Renaud-Tremblay, a second-year forward from Montreal, led the charge on his way to a 20-point night. Head Coach Dave DeAveiro praised Renaud-Tremblay’s performance, saying, “He’s becoming one of the leaders of this team.”

Both teams looked tentative out of the gate, trading turnovers and missing shots for the better part of two minutes before McGill’s Winn Clark sank the first field goal of the game, sparking a 9-0 Redmen run. In a hole early, Niagara crawled back into the game and ended the first quarter trailing by just two points. In the second quarter, the Redmen and Purple Eagles traded leads five times in the first five minutes. At the five-minute mark, with McGill up by three, second-year guard Karim Sy-Morissette had a steal and a bucket followed by another two from the foul line on the next possession, stretching the lead to seven points. The back-to-back plays by the second-year guard gave McGill the momentum heading into halftime with a 37-31 lead.

The Redmen took over in the third quarter, outscoring Niagara 21-9. While DeAveiro was pleased with what he saw from his team on the night, the Niagara Head Coach Joe Mihalich didn’t hide his frustration. With 3:36 to go in the third, he blew up at officials after a string of questionable calls in McGill’s favour. Simon Bibeau, who had 15 points on the night, made both free throws that resulted from the technical, capping a 14-4 run for the Redmen.

McGill took a 58-40 lead into the fourth quarter before pulling away even further. With the score 61-40, Renaud-Tremblay had his best play of the game, passing the ball through two Niagara defenders to teammate Vincent Dufort for an easy layup. After calling a timeout to regroup, the Purple Eagles came out much more aggressively. Niagara began playing a full-court press and started hitting their three-point shots as they cut the deficit to four points with just under two minutes to play. With 58 seconds remaining and a six-point Redmen lead, Niagara was once again the victim of questionable officiating as a foul call allowed McGill to take the ball the other way and stretch the lead to eight, taking away any hopes of a comeback.

Though Niagara would likely point to the one-sided officiating, the true story of the game was McGill’s dominance down low. The Redmen outscored the Purple Eagles 44-26 in the paint and out-rebounded them 41-33, leading to 16 second-chance points.

“All the credit goes to the kids,” said DeAveiro after the game. “The guys are a pretty happy bunch right now and they’ve seen what their hard work can achieve.” The Redmen will have some time off to focus on academics before resuming their pre-season schedule October 14 at Dalhousie.