Once a walk-on, Kapinga now a national champion and leader of the 16-0 Dinos

“it wasn’t really fair for him, it’s a lot easier to look at kids live than on video,” Vanhooren said. “I saw a very good athlete who could defend and could keep up with our players, but at that time not a player who shot the ball particularly well. It just wasn’t anything that stuck out from that video that you would have said ‘Oh wow, that’s exceptional.’”

Kapinga, who’s a Congolese refugee, persisted. He made another call to Vanhooren. He asked if he could practise with the team.

“I said ‘Yeah, I think you can come, but no promises,’” said the coach, who was happy with the three point guards he already had. “But by the time we got to pre-season, he’d done so well in practice at times, and we were in Cape Breton for a tournament, and he performed very well, and from that point on he started for us.”

Last season, Kapinga led the underdog Dinos to their first national men’s basketball title in the program’s 51-year history. The 23-year-old guard was named championship MVP.

And Vanhooren was happy he took him on.

“Glad I didn’t make that mistake,” the coach laughed.

Kapinga’s family left the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo when he was five. He and his parents — mom Apolina and dad Laurent — and his five siblings originally settled in Gatineau, Que., but moved to Calgary when he was 12 because of the strong economy out west.

Kapinga quickly became a leader on the Dinos. Former teammate Jhony Verrone called him “the light.”

“Jhony’s someone who doesn’t show too much emotion, and I always made him laugh, and I always tried to make him understand that: we’re travelling right now, we don’t have to pay, we’re in Vancouver, or we’re in Winnipeg, we’re in a hotel room, eating steak after games,” Kapinga said. “Where we come from, it was unthinkable. Him from Montreal, me from the Congo. I made him understand that this is a blessing. So he said, ‘You’re the light,’ and that name stuck.”

Vanhooren raves about Kapinga’s smothering defence.

“He’s a terror as a defender. We used to say ‘Welcome to the David Kapinga support group,’ if you had to play against him, if you’d been stripped of the ball by him. It was kind of an ongoing joke.

“But he’s a terrific player, a great team guy, and he has a positive mental approach to life that I think is rather unique and he’s really benefited him.”

Kapinga was rooming with Mambi Diawara at the U Sports Final 8 in Halifax. The two had played together on Canada’s team at the FISU (world university) Games the previous summer in Taiwan. They would go on to win silver together at the Commonwealth Games last April.

Kapinga and Diawara spent the night before their final against Ryerson watching video of Rams games in their room.

“We were talking about how it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Mambi was saying he’d never really won anything,” Kapinga said. “My comment to him was ‘Let me show you how to be a winner.’ And that’s pretty much what we did.”

Speaking from Kentucky on Monday, where Kapinga and a film crew were working on a documentary called “The Walk On,” Kapinga could still recite every big play of that final.

The thriller was decided in the final seconds. Kapinga missed a key free throw. At the other end, Manny Diressa, who went off for 24 second-half points, hit a three to tie the game with nine seconds left.

“Coach calls a timeout, the crowd is going crazy, (Diressa’s three) was probably one of the biggest shots in U Sports history. Crazy shot,” Kapinga said.

In the huddle, “Mambi says ‘Give me the ball, we’re winning this game.’ We had seconds left in the timeout, the ref is walking over, and I said ‘This what we’re going to do, we’re going to do the play we did in Taiwan to win the game.’”

But nobody else knew the play.

“Lucas Mannes was looking at me, and I could see in his eyes that he didn’t know the play. I get the ball, and Lucas is standing where Mambi is supposed to be going, and I yell at him and I’m waving my arms ‘Move! Move!’ He just starts sprinting, Mambi came in behind him, I passed the ball to Mambi, Mambi takes a long two steps and then a left-handed layup.”

Diawara’s basket, with two seconds left, gave the Dinos a 79-77 win.

“It was ridiculous, it was an amazing feeling,” said Kapinga, who had 25 points, eight rebounds and six assists.

The Dinos are 16-0 this and No. 3 on this week’s U Sports rankings behind powerhouse Carleton (14-0) and Ryerson (13-1).

The five-foot-11 Kapinga is averaging 12.4 points in 3.6 assists this season, but the Dinos have a greater inside presence this season with the addition of former Mount Royal Cougars all-star Brett Layton. The 27-year-old law student and father of two is second in Canada West in both rebounding (9.3 per game) and field goals made, and fifth in field goal percentage (58.0).

The Dinos, whose victory capped three straight national appearances, believe they’re even better than last season.

“When you go through so much and achieve what we achieved last year, without anyone believing we could do it except ourselves, it’s hard to take that confidence away from our team, it’s hard to take that belief away,” Kapinga said. “We did it when nobody believed us, with a team of nobodies. But now we have the same (team), plus a transfer come in (Layton), which was a big, big, big pickup for us.

“That just reinforced the belief of what we can accomplish if we play together, which we have been, and I (think) all those things reinforce that belief, that we can achieve what we want to achieve. That’s winning a national championship.”

The U Sports Final 8 returns to Halifax, March 8-10.

TIP-INS: Three of the top-five teams on AP’s NCAA men’s poll include Canadians: Kyle Alexander of Milton, Ont., (No. 1 Tennessee); RJ Barrett of Mississauga, Ont., (No. 2 Duke); and Ignas Brazdeikis of Mono, Ont., (No. 5 Michigan).

Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Once a walk-on, Kapinga now a national champion and leader of the 16-0 Dinos

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