UBC creates 'basketball festival' by combining men's, women's U Sports championships

U Sports is ramping up its own March madness.

For the first time, Canada's university men's and women's basketball championships will be played alongside one another on the Point Grey campus at the University of British Columbia.

UBC athletic director Kavie Toor is expecting big things from the ground-breaking event.

"It's going to feel like a basketball festival," Toor said. "It's going to really have an incredible feel, probably similar to a [U.S.] March Madness."

The men's and women's Final 8s run Thursday through Sunday across the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre and War Memorial Gymnasium. Live coverage of both tournaments is available on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem.

Game schedules are intertwined with women's contests leading into men's and vice versa — fulfilling one of Toor's goals of full integration. The men's championship goes at 10 a.m. ET/1 p.m. PT on Sunday, followed by the women at 1 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.

"We mainly all throughout the tournament viewed it as a tremendous opportunity to positively set a new path forward. And we hope that after these championships that other schools will take notice and be like, 'OK, let's do dual championships,'" Toor said.

"Because it does lift varsity sports as a whole. It does bring up the women's championship as a whole that's on par with the men's championship and it creates a bit of a new formula."

Of course, there have been some hurdles for Toor and his team as they navigated new ground.

Logistics, like the schedule, presented the main challenge, but UBC successfully lobbied U Sports to add a day to the men's tournament to make it all work.

Toor said the planning process required plenty of creativity and ideation.

"We view our role in the Canadian ecosystem to lead