If the Ottawa Gee-Gees needed a wake-up call in their quest for a national men's basketball championship, they got a huge left hook to the chin on Friday night.

It wasn't a knockout blow, but wow, did the country's fifth-ranked Windsor Lancers ever pack a punch.

The Gee-Gees' shooting went cold when they most needed it and they couldn't defend their own end well enough against the feisty Lancers who stunned Ottawa on its home court, 85-80, in the early game of the OUA Wilson Cup semi-finals.

On most nights, the Gee-Gees find a way to win.

That's how you get to be the No. 1-ranked team in the country.

Not Friday. Not when it mattered. Thankfully, it wasn't a death blow. And now, they'll settle for a wild-card entry into the CIS Final 8 next week in Toronto.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

The defending Wilson Cup champions won't get a chance to defend that trophy, instead going for bronze in the early game Saturday (6 p.m. at Montpetit Hall).

Full marks to the Lancers, who also knocked off the country's second-ranked Carleton Ravens in January.

"Sometimes you just have to suck it up, take a loss and say it's on you," said OUA Player of the Year Johnny Berhanemeskel, who had 19 points for the Gee-Gees.

"We're still blessed to get another opportunity (Saturday) and hopefully we make it to nationals. That's the only way you can look at it with 10 days max left in your season. No championship team has an easy road. Our season went pretty smooth and sometimes something's got to wake you up."

For the Gee-Gees, it's back to the drawing board, trying to figure out what went wrong.

"There are lot of things that I don't have an answer for," said Gee-Gees coach James Derouin.

"There were things out there that I haven't seen in our team in a long time. Windsor did a great job. They controlled the glass and hurt us in the paint."

Maybe it was the lights, maybe it was the home cooking.

"Having it at home seemed to throw us off; I wouldn't have bet on that going in," said Derouin.

"The guys know what's at stake, I don't think they came into this game overconfident. If you didn't know our team better, you would say it looked like nerves. There's no excuse, they've played a ton of big games.

"At times we looked like we were getting it going, but then it would die. I mixed up lineups to try and get some kind of rhythm. In the end, 80 points should be enough to get you a win at this point of the season. Our offence was not in synch, but ultimately it was on the defensive end where we lost it."

For the Gee-Gees, Caleb Agada had 15 points, while Mike L'Africain had 13. Alex Campbell had 20 points for the Lancers, while Khalid Abdel-Gabar had 19 and Mitch Farrell, who gutted it out after what looked like an ankle injury, had 16.

"A lot of guys said we were the underdogs," said Abdel-Gabar.

"But in our eyes, we believe we're the No. 1 team. Rankings are just rankings. We came into the game knowing we were the better team."

The Gee-Gees fell behind early, but battled back and led 26-20 after the first quarter.

Ottawa led through much of the second quarter, but, after the Lancers tied it 38-38, a Berhanemeskel bucket gave the Gee-Gees a two-point halftime lead.

Through the third and fourth quarters, the teams traded baskets and the score see-sawed back and forth.

Twitter: @timcbaines