Morning rounds ...

Football

• Western's tailback platoon of Da'Shawn Thomas and Nathan Riva are being called "Da'Riva" in headlines. Clearly, someone in London added the apostrophe to avoid paying a certain blog-writing Queen'sman royalties.
  
  The irony is not lost! (Sun Media)

Basketball

• A lot of goodies from Jim Thomas:
  

  "The surprise team in the CIS this winter will be Trinity Western who have an outstanding recruiting class coming in including several transfers from American universities. UBC and the University of Victoria have long been the CIS powers in B.C. but that is about to change. It will take Trinity Western's new roster a while to gel but come January they will be a force to be reckoned with on the West Coast.
  
  "There are several outstanding recruiting classes coming into the OUA West this year and overall the conference teams had their best recruiting year ever. In contrast, the OUA only has two recruiting classes in Carleton and Ottawa that would be considered among the top fifteen classes in the CIS. This does not bode well for future competition between the two conferences and could lead to a big disparity in competition down the road if the OUA East teams don't do better on the recruiting trail this winter."

  
  It would be nice to believe this site was ahead of the curve with Trinity Western, since it sang their praises last season.
  
  
• Canadian national team player Ryan Bell, the former Carleton guard, is apparently playing in Finland. (cishoops.ca)
  
  
• Mark Wayck's spin around the hoopsgeist continues with a look at new coach Roy Rana's rebuilding Ryerson Rams. Everyone knows about Boris Bakovic in the post, but their X-factor is likely the backcourt, where Mark notes Josh Budd is coming in his own at point guard and Ryan McNeilly is a solid two-guard.
  
  
• Retired Alberta coach Don Horwood's roast was a whole lot of fun. (The Gateway)
  

Hockey

• Nipissing officially had 3,693 for the Lakers' first exhibition game last Saturday. (North Bay Nugget)
  
  
• Carleton went 3-0 and outscored the opposition 9-2 in a season-opening three-game road trip to play OUA teams. One does wonder how the Ravens and Ottawa Gee-Gees would fare in the OUA, but bloggers cannot be choosers.
  


• Not CIS, but a girls high school team in Woodstock, N.B., received a human rights award for the way it rallied around two gay teammates who were being harassed by opposing players.