Brothers to meet in playoffs
Feb. 24, 2010 - Regina Leader-Post
By Ian Hamilton
Sterling Nostedt will face a member of his clan while taking on the Clan.
Nostedt and his University of Regina Cougars teammates are to be in Burnaby, B.C., on Thursday to begin a best-of-three Canada West men's basketball playoff series against the Simon Fraser University Clan. That squad includes Jordan Nostedt, who's Sterling's older brother.
So, has there been any long-distance chirping in the days leading up to the series?
"Absolutely," Sterling said with a grin Tuesday after the Cougars practised at the U of R's Physical Activity Centre. "It's all friendly, though."
Yeah, right.
"No, really," the Cougars' second-year guard continued. "It's stuff from, 'Hey, how ya doing?' to, 'You'd better be ready this weekend.' We probably talk five times a day, either by text or on the phone. We're very close."
"We talk quite a bit," Jordan confirmed from Burnaby. "There have been a couple of comments back and forth, but nothing too major. We're both the type of guy who lets the game do the talking."
So far, Jordan has carried the conversation.
Simon Fraser has won each of the two games it has played against the Cougars during Sterling's time in Regina. The Clan won 91-76 in Regina on Nov. 13 and 87-80 in Burnaby on Jan. 3, 2009.
"He has never beaten me one on one and he hasn't beaten me in the CIS," Jordan said with a chuckle. "There's definitely something on the line there."
"Every game we play, there's pride at stake," Sterling noted. "At the dinner table, (the outcomes of games) decide who gets to talk and who doesn't. He's a couple up on me."
Whichever brother wins two games this weekend will have more than bragging rights. The winner of this series advances to the Canada West Final Four on March 5-6.
The two teams that reach the final of that event qualify for the CIS championship tournament, March 19-21 in Ottawa.
To get through this series -- games are set for Thursday, Friday and Saturday (if necessary) -- the Cougars must handle a Clan attack that lit them up from the outside in the teams' meeting earlier this season.
Simon Fraser was 18-for-35 from behind the arc in that contest, with five players hitting at least two treys. Kevin Shaw led the way, hitting six of eight three-point attempts.
"They shoot the ball well," Regina head coach James Hillis said. "They run the Princeton offence, they're good at it and they spread you out. The challenge for us will be to negate their 'smalls' and get out and defend the three-point line."
"It's going to be on the defensive end where we get things done," added Sterling Nostedt. "They're a very good shooting team -- and they proved that when they were here before. We have to buckle down on defence, take away their open looks and contest every shot."
The Clan went 14-4 in the regular season, good for second place in the Pacific Division behind the 17-1 UBC Thunderbirds. Simon Fraser is ranked ninth in the country entering this series.
"They're good," said Hillis, whose squad finished third in the Prairie Division with a 10-10 regular-season record. "It's a 14-team league. Once you get to the playoffs, everybody you play is good. But they're beatable."
The other series pit the Alberta Golden Bears against the T-Birds in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley Cascades versus the Saskatchewan Huskies in Saskatoon, and the Lethbridge Pronghorns against the home-town Calgary Dinos.