While fans of basketball in the City of Brandon got justifiably nostalgic last week in the lead up to the final games to ever be played in the Brandon University Gymnasium, it would be easy to overlook the fact that the 47-year-old facility has been a shadow of its former self in recent years.

Not cosmetically of course — the old barn has never won any beauty contests — but in its role as an unmistakable weapon for the home team. Of course that has more to do with what’s going on inside the walls than the walls themselves.

When March comes and goes it will have been five years since the Brandon Bobcats last made an appearance at the national championship tournament, a drought that is completely foreign to a program that made 17 straight appearances from the 1980s to 2000s, albeit with many of those coming while a member of the four-team Great Plains Athletic Conference — a decidedly easier path than the one that faces teams in the current make-up of the Canada West.

And evidently Brandon sports fans are a finicky lot because the attendance and resonance has been largely lacking since that national final loss in 2007.

Yet when there’s a big game, Brandon fans prove they can holler with the best of them and swing momentum as well as any fan base. Saturday night they served up a reminder of that.

Clinging to a faint playoff hope, the Bobcats provided a vintage performance that gave their post-season hopes one more breath of life with an 87-75 win over the Lethbridge Pronghorns. In a game that featured 12 ties, and in which the largest lead for much of the second half was a mere six points, the Bobcats hearkened back to some of the riveting drama of many years past at the BU Gym with three plays orchestrated like a boxer setting up his opponent for the knockout blow.

• Donovan Gayle, one of two seniors playing their last game in the gym, threw the first jab — a fast-break reverse dunk that brought BU to within one with six-plus minutes to go and was part of a critical 9-2 Bobcats run. Sensing what the play meant, the pro-Bobcat crowd upped its intensity and the momentum gradually swung to the home side.

• Redshirt freshman Ilarion Bonhomme continued the combo with a debilitating blow of his own: With BU leading by two with just over a minute remaining, and the shot clock winding down, the diminutive point guard hit a step-back three with a man in his face that boosted the Brandon lead to 78-73, an improbable dagger that provided more fodder for the crowd that was now in full pitch.

• Just 12 seconds later, the knockout came courtesy of Gayle. After teammate Ali Mounir forced a turnover at midcourt, Gayle was sprung free for a tomahawk dunk that sent the room into hysterics and ostensibly ended it right then and there. The only thing missing was a ref calling for the bell, or a white towel flying through the air.

In the pantheon of memorable classics authored in that gym, the game may not get top-10 status — after all this is still a sub-.500 team with a very outside shot at making the playoffs — but given the circumstances, the stage and the desperate hopes of many to send the gym out “on the right note,” you can surely say it will not be one that will be forgotten any time soon. As the players and coaches stood at centre court afterward and raised their arms to salute the assembled crowd — which returned the gesture with a standing ovation — it would be hard to argue you could have written the finale any better.

“I don’t wanna be that guy, but you get a little choked up because you see the fans … and you get out there and you realize that this place means a lot to a lot of people and I wouldn’t be in the position that I was if it wasn’t for this place,” said BU head coach Gil Cheung, a former Bobcat player now in his second season as coach. “It was perfect. Not just Ilarion, not Donovan, not Kyle (Vince) … it was a total team effort and I couldn’t be more proud of those guys.”

When it was suggested that the Bobcats gave the crowd a performance reminiscent of so many others over the years at that gym, Cheung could not disagree.

“That’s what I remember too. They called timeout, a minute-30 on the clock and the place was electric. I don’t know how many buildings you still get that feeling in. Let’s be honest: It looks like there’s 4000 people and there might be 290 or something but it’s electric, it’s loud. It was a throwback.”

Gayle, who is as likable a player as BU has ever had, only played three seasons in Brandon but he was nevertheless honoured on Seniors Night, along with Vince, the Winnipegger who is in the midst of the last of his five years after coming out of J.H. Bruns. Vince has been a consistent perimeter threat in his five seasons, shooting 36% from that range for his career. Gayle, on the other hand, arrived as a recruit of Keith Vassell‘s in 2008 and immediately stood out as a physical presence with more than a bit of athleticism.

“That was the 2008 Donovan Gayle,” he laughed when asked about the game-changing dunks.

And even though his history at BU has been a short one, the importance of the moment was not lost on Gayle.

“To be able to close out the gym with a win, it means a lot to me. That I could be a part of that with a dunk and with a win, that means a lot.”

The Bobcats still need a lot to work in their favour if they’re to make the playoffs — two wins at No. 10 Alberta this weekend are a must for starters.

But for at least that one night they got just what they wanted: In their quest to send their longtime home out on a high note, the Brandon Bobcats struck all the right chords and penned another opus for the building that for decades resonated from classic performances — and did so right down to its final days.