Queen's Men's Basketball made a valiant comeback attempt in their U SPORTS Men's Basketball Final 8 Championship quarterfinals, but it wasn't enough as they fell to the host StFX X-Men, 107-98 Friday night in Halifax, N.S.

The Gaels trailed by as many as 34 points to the X-Men, but closed the gap to less than 10 points late in the fourth quarter. It wasn't enough, as StFX held on in front of a large home crowd to advance to the national semifinals.

Queen's was playing catchup from the start with StFX jumping out to a 20-point lead after the first quarter. The Gaels' troubles would last into the second quarter, with the X-Men adding another 10 points to their lead.

It was all Queen's in the second half, with the Gaels outscoring StFX by 10 points in the third quarter before putting up 39 points in a huge fourth quarter, but the X-Men managed to hang on for the single-digit win.

"The goal for our program, and our players can tell you this because they all know this, we spend a lot of time talking about goal setting, and really the goal for us is always just to get better every single day and take every single day for the day that it is," said head coach Steph Barrie after the game. "Don't look ahead, don't look behind, and focus on today and get better."

"That's gotten us to where we are. A program that hadn't been to the Nationals in its history [before last season]. This year, we had the best winning record we've had in program history. And we didn't do that because we set out a goal to do that. We basically just break it down, get better today.

"And then what we always say is the results will take care of themselves. We do that right, and I can live with that. And I would never exchange what we've done here just to win a national championship. What we've done is very valuable to everyone in the room, past players that have contributed to this, getting it to this point, going through all the hard times."
 
Six Gaels players scored in double digits, led by U SPORTS First Team All-Canadian Cole Syllas (Kingston, Ont.), who recorded a double-double with a team-high 18 points and 14 rebounds.

Brandon Aultman scored 17 points off the bench while Connor Keefe added 16 points, Connor Kelly poured in 15 points, Cam Bett scored 14 points, and Luka Syllas added 11 points.

The Gaels finished the game shooting 37 per cent from the floor and 24 per cent from three-point range, while StFX shot 41 per cent from the floor and 32 per cent from three-point range. 

With the loss, Queen's will now play in the Consolation Bracket at the U SPORTS Men's Basketball Final 8 Championship. The Gaels will take on the loser of the final quarterfinals game between the No. 1 seed Victoria Vikes and No. 8 seed UPEI Panthers.