MONTREAL -- The Quebec university men's basketball version of "March Madness" began a day early as the No. 5 ranked Redmen overwhelmed Bishop's 105-76 in a sudden-death semifinal at Love Competition Hall, Wednesday.
Jenning Leung paced the Redmen with a game-high 29 points, including a McGill single-game playoff record seven treys in a wide-open shooting festival, as the Redmen posted 16 total treys to match the single-game school high set in a non-conference loss to Southern Methodist on Aug. 8, 2017.
Top-seeded McGill will now host second-place Concordia in the RSEQ league championship game on Saturday at 3 p.m. The Stingers disposed of third-place Laval 72-63 in Wednesday's other semifinal.
McGill, which led by as much as 38 in the final stanza, jumped into a 28-19 lead after the opening quarter and 46-38 at halftime. They exploded in the second half, outscoring the Gaiters 35-16 and 24-13.
It was a school record fifth time this season that the Redmen had breached the 100-point barrier, the third such instance against Bishop's. McGill's 35 points in the third quarter was one shy of the team record set in a 105-59 win over UQAM on Jan. 6, 2018.
"Bishop's played really well in the first half, had a good game-plan against our pressure and kept it close with an eight-point difference at halftime," said McGill bench boss
David DeAveiro, named before the game as the RSEQ's coach of the year for the fifth time in his eight seasons with the Redmen. "Then we made an adjustment. Defensively we took our pressure off and then just settled into our man-to-man half-court defence and that seemed to get us going... and we kind of imposed our will on them."
Leung, a fifth-year psychology senior from the Philippines who has been hampered with hand and leg injuries, halted a four-game struggle where he failed to reach the 10-point plateau. He shot 10-for-19 from the field, including a spectacular 7-for-13 performance from three-point range. The 6-foot-1, 181-pound guard was 2-for-2 from the free-throw line and collected four rebounds, a pair of steals and two assists.
"Jenning was overdue, he's had some really good looks in terms of shooting the ball but hasn't been able to knock those down of late," said DeAveiro. "He's too good a shooter and works way too hard to not be rewarded."
Leung was one of four Redmen to reach double digits in scoring, along with seniors
Alex Paquin (14) and
Francois Bourque (11), in addition to freshman
Sam Jenkins, who came off the bench to score 11 points.
Four Gaiters were also in double figures.
Kevin Davis led with 17, followed by
Abdul Kamane (15),
Nervens Demosthene (11) and
Yassin Naji (10). Demosthene, who was named earlier in the day as the league's rookie of the year, was ejected late in the third quarter after receiving a technical foul. Gaiters head coach
Rod Gilpin also drew a technical two minutes into the fourth quarter.
Bishop's had a 37-35 edge in rebounding but McGill won the turnover battle by a lopsided 28-9 advantage, The Redmen shot 46.8 per cent from the field (37/79), a lofty 45.7 from downtown (16.35) and 68.2 from the line (15/22). The Gaiters shot 45.5, 31.3 and 42.9, respectively.
REDMEN RAP:
Avery Cadogan holds the McGill overall record with eight treys in a game, going 8-for-9, in a non-conference win over Kent State on Aug. 14, 2017. The team's regular season record is seven by
Dele Ogundokun (7-for-10 vs. Concordia, Nov. 24, 2016). Two other Redmen have nailed seven treys in non-conference play, including
Thomas Lacy (7-for-9 vs. Guelph, Oct. 4, 2014) and
