It’s a wrap from Day 1 at the 2017 Telus BC girls high school senior varsity basketball championships.
Here are game recaps from all 16 sudden-elimination contests. First we lead off with a look at Thursday’s schedule.
DOUBLE A
QUARTERFINALS
12 p.m. — South Kamloops vs. Immaculta, 1:45 p.m. — Seycove vs. Ballenas, 3:30 p.m. — Vernon vs. Windsor; 5:15 p.m. — Langley Christian vs. Britannia
CONSOLATION
8:30 a.m. — David Thompson vs. Okanagan Mission, 10:15 a.m. — Southridge vs. College Heights, 7 p.m. — SMUS vs. Duchess Park, 8:45 p.m. — Charles Hays vs. GW Graham
TRIPLE A
QUARTERFINALS
12 p.m. — Brookswood vs. Kelowna; 1:45 p.m. — Abbotsford vs. Argyle; 3:15 p.m. — Walnut Grove vs. Panorama Ridge; 4:45 p.m. — Oak Bay vs. Lord Tweedsmuir
CONSOLATION
8:30 a.m. — Prince George vs. Yale; 10:15 a.m. — Claremont vs. Carson Graham; 6 p.m. — Mt. Baker vs. R.A. McMath; 8:45 p.m. — Dover Bay vs. Sir Winston Churchill
TRIPLE A
TOP HALF DRAW
QUADRANT A
LORD TWEEDSMUIR 86 R.A. MCMATH 44
LANGLEY — Maryn Budiman and Shelvin Grewal represent the most explosive offensive qualities of Surrey’s Panthers, and on Thursday, the pair combined for 42 points in a victory over last season’s finalists, Richmond’s R.A. McMath Wildcats.
Budiman scored a game-high 22 points, Grewal added 20, Harnett Sidhu 14 and Brianne Boufford 10 as the Panthers, ranked No. 2 in the last provincial rankings, face No. 1 Oak Bay in the 4:45 p.m. clash that will highlight Thursday’s Triple A quarterfinal draw.
Abby Zawada led McMath with 17 points.
OAK BAY 73 MT. BAKER 36
LANGLEY — In a the No. 1 vs. No. 16 game, the Breakers continued to remain undefeated on the season with a decisive victory.
Natalie Froese led the Breakers with 16 points while Jasmine Lambert and Sophie de Goede each added 13. Oak Bay led 45-12 at the half. Sydney Marlowe led Mt. Baker with six points.
QUADRANT B
WALNUT GROVE 91 DOVER BAY 62
LANGLEY — Jess Wisotzki and Tavia Rowell combined to score 47 points as the Walnut Grove Gators toppled the Nanaimo’s Dover Bay Dolphins.
The Fraser Valley’s No. 3 seeds led 25-12 after the opening quarter.
Madeline Hart led the Dolphins with 20 points and seven rebounds, while Jessica Roy added 15.
PANORAMA RIDGE 78 SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL 41
Savannah Dhaliwal was at her do-it-all best Wednesday, her 31 points, seven assists, seven rebounds and three blocks going a long ways towards the Thunder’s move to the Thursday’s quarterfinal round.
Simrit Bindra’s 14 points, as well as the 13 rebounds of Arsh Gill helped the Surrey squad turn on the second-half jets as Panorama allowed Churchill just 11 second-half points.
Alexa Leynes with 13 points and Katrina Kwong with 11 points led Churchill.
BOTTOM HALF DRAW
QUADRANT C
ARGYLE 65 YALE 62
LANGLEY — Sierra Scheffer might have experienced two of the most frustrating calls of her basketball career on back-to-back possesions Wednesday as her Argyle Pipers opened the 2017 provincials against Abbotsford’s Yale Lions.
Scheffer was called for a travel on a wide-open fast-break to the basket, and on her team’s very next possession a technical, after she voiced her opinion on the heavy contact she endured while driving for another lay-up.
Pipers’ head coach Anthonyt Beyrouti pulled her briefly from the proceedings, then watched her make the game’s decisive shots down the stretch drive as Argyle survived to post a 65-62 win over the Lions.
“Sierra hit some huge shots down the stretch after she got called for the tech,” said Argyle head coach Anthony Beyrouti of his senior who finished with 35 points. “She had lost her composure a bit so we pulled her out to re-focus her.”
Scheffer, bound for SFU next season, hit two huge threes down the stretch which were essential to holding back a Yale team which rallied from 14 points down to tie the game in the late going.
Georgian Swant, the Lower Mainland MVP, added 17 points.
Yale took a shot to tie the game just before the final buzzer but came up just short.
Madison Draayers led Yale with 23 points, including 11 in the fourth quarter. Tana Pankratz added 11 points and
Selah Pankratz 10.
ABBOTSFORD 97 PRINCE GEORGE 56
LANGLEY — Sienna Lenz could not have gotten off to a better start.
Abbotsford’s star Grade 11 guard shot 15-of-20 from the field, scoring a game-high 34 points in the Panthers 97-56 win over Prince George. Grade nine sister Marin Lenz added 21 points, while guard Sydney Fetterly and forward Kelsey Roufosse scored 12 each.
Nusa Zorko scored 13 points to lead three Polars in double figures.
QUADRANT D
BROOKSWOOD 79 CLAREMONT 55
LANGLEY — Freshly-minted B.C. Player of the Year Louise Forsyth poured in 29 points while teammates Tavia Jasper and Jenna Dick each scored 15 as the three-time defending champion Bobcats began their push for four with a win over Vicrtoria’s Spartans.
Guard Abby MacMillan-Beauchamp led Claremont with 12 points, while forward Lauren Stinson-Montgomery added 11 points.
KELOWNA 58 CARSON GRAHAM 37
LANGLEY — Courtney Donaldson didn’t have the start to her season that she wanted.
Now, the Kelowna Owls’star senior guard is hoping to have the finish she and her teammates have all worked towards.
With the Calgary Dinos’ recruit now well recovered from a nagging early-season ankle injury, her next-level generalship was impossible to miss as the Okanagan champs broke through the doldrums of an uneven first half to beat North Vancouver’s Carson Graham Eagles 58-37 in the opening round of the B.C. tournament.
“It was pretty rough,” Donaldson says of her condition before the holiday break. “It felt like it was taking forever to heal. All the re-hab, watching practice, form shooting. Now, I’m finally back on the court.”
On Tuesday, Donaldson’s main contributions weren’t even her points or assists totals. They were more about her presence, and the space that her dribble-penetration-dish game creates.
“She gives us a dynamic where we can run the ball through her,” said Owls’ head coach Darren Semeniuk. “When we put her at the point of attack, it really opens up our shooters.”
Guard Dez Day (15 points) led the Owls on 6-of-10 shooting.
Thompson River’s recruit Alley Corrado and Grade 10 forward Kennedy Dickie each scored nine points, Donaldson scored eight and Chelsea Espenberg five in the win.
Kelowna led a low-scoring game 9-8 at the end of the first quarter, but once its zone pressure began to gain momentum, the pace picked up and the Owls looked more like the team which has been provincially-ranked the entire season.
“We have been working on this all year, we are smaller overall so we have to use our speed to our advantage, against teams that maybe don’t have two or three ball-handlers,” said Semeniuk. “We’ve always got two or three girls that can get up and force the issue, so as soon as we saw them hesitate in the first half, that was going to be our plan for the rest of the game.”
Donaldson, for her part, is relishing this week at the LEC, especially since coming back from her injury.
“It makes me really appreciate it,” she says. “When I was in Grade 10, I had my seniors telling me ‘Appreciate this because it will go by really quickly’. I was in Grade 10. I was like ‘This won’t go by fast.’ But you blink your eye and your in your senior year at your last provincials ever.”
Carson Graham’s Grade 11 point guard Alex Walker had 10 points and nine rebounds. Chloe Brebner had eight points and eight rebounds.
DOUBLE A
TOP HALF DRAW
QUADRANT A
SEYCOVE 64 DAVID THOMPSON 12
The No. 1-seeded Seyhawks opened the game on a 32-1 run en route to its decisive win over the Invermere’s Lakers.
Lindsay Bott and Kayla Krug each scored 14 points while Sage Stobbart and Naomi Bradshaw added 12 apiece.
Shelbie Clark led David Thompson with six points and 15 rebounds.
BALLENAS 65 OKANAGAN MISSION 53
LANGLEY — Constanze Ehrmeier, the 10th grade standout guard for Parksville’s Ballenas Whalers, played beyond her years, scoring a game-high 23 points and grabbing 15 rebounds in helping lead her team to a win over Kelowna’s Okanagan Mission Huskies.
Kate Reynolds added 17 points and Makayala Hoey 13 for the Vancouver Island champions.
Hannah Walline led the Huskies with 11 points, while Marin Felt added nine and six rebounds.
QUADRANT B
SOUTH KAMLOOPS 74 SOUTHRIDGE 72
LANGLEY — Elation for the Titans, heartbreak for the Storm.
Adrianna Bissonnettee’s last-second bucket snapped a 72-72 tie and carried South Kamloops to victory over Surrey’s underdogs.
Maddy Gobeil led the Titans with 31 points while Ally Lincoln had 11 points and 14 rebounds.
Southridge, balanced all season on offence, got 15 points from Cassiel Penalosa, 14 from Jaydsa Anderson and 10 from Hannah Morrison.
IMMACULTA 83 COLLEGE HEIGHTS 63
LANGLEY — Ashlyn Day and Kate Johnson have arrived from Kelowna, and their assault of the goals at the Langley Event Centre officially began Wednesday.
Immaculata’s twin terrors combined to take 67 shots from the field and score 79 of their team’s 83 points as the Mustangs topped Prince George’s College Heights Cougars.
Johnson scored 45 points and grabbed 23 rebounds, while Day scored 34 and grabbed 12 rebounds.
Jessica Nhycholat had 28 points and 10 rebounds in the loss for College Heights.
BOTTOM HALF DRAW
QUADRANT C
LANGLEY CHRISTIAN 61 SMUS 31
Hannah Krepp, the Fraser Valley MVP, scored 10 points and grabbed a game-high 12 rebounds as the tournament’s No. 2-seeded Lightning were sound winners over Victoria’s Blue Jags.
Katelyn Mallette led the winners with 16 points and List van Wyk added 14 as the Lightning held SMUS to just two points in the second quarter.
Taylor Noel led the Blue Jags with 16 points, while Zoe Lott had 11 rebounds.
BRITANNIA 65 DUCHESS PARK 54
LANGLEY — In the classic Marvel comic tales of The Fantastic Four, Mister Fantastic is the genius scientist who has been given the power to stretch his body into any shape he desires.
Think about that ability to go from large to small and any dimension in between, apply it to the roster of a girls high school basketball team and you have the squad which closed out Wednesday’s eight-game sudden elimination draw at the B.C. senior girls Double-A basketball championships.
With an across-the-board mix of tall, small, quick and powerful, Vancouver’s Britannia Bruins provide infinite possibilities for its head coach, the ageless wonder Mike Evans.
In Wednesday’s clash with the No. 7-seed, defending B.C. champion Duchess Parl Condors of Prince George, Evans got the chance to play scientist, his penchant for mixing, matching and ultimately creating mismatches carrying the No. 10-seeded Bruins to a 65-54 win.
“We started four guards and a post player, so we played four-out and tried to space the floor, creating gaps and cutting hard to the basket.
“Then we went with two bigs and that made it two in and three out,” he continued. “When we did that, one of their guards had to check one of our bigs and that resulted in the mismatches.”
The result?
With 6-foot-2 Grade 11 post Malena Mokhovikova an omnipresent member of Evans’ starting group, the addition of 6-foot-2 senior Saffron van der Linde who scored 16 points and grabbed 13 rebounds off the bench created just the effect the Bruins sought. Mokhovikova added 10 points and eight rebounds.
And while the big line-up was successful, when Evans decided to shrink the collective group, there was also a spark, and it came from 5-foot-5 Grade 9 guard Shemaiah Abatayo, whose dead-eye shooting and terrific court sense led to a game-high 18 points and countless assists.
“Shemaiah is a tremendous athlete,” said Evans. “Super quick and a great shooter. She might get caught in the size game down the road, but she plays way taller than she is, if you know what I mean.”
Everyone in the crowd did.
Her ability and that of 5-foot-7 Grade 9 swing forward Surprise Munie (eight steals, six points, six rebounds), and 5-foot-4 Grade 11 guard Lucy Guan (11 points, seven assists) gave the Condors all they could handle.
By the midway mark of the second quarter, Britannia had built it’s largest lead of the game at 18 points, and although Duchess Park was able to mount a run and challenge, the early cushion proved enough for the win.
The Condors didn’t produce a doube-digit scorer but Logan Cruz led a balanced attack with nine points. Litsanna Thanos added eight and Kayla Gregory seven.
The Bruins will tip off in a 5:15 p.m. quarterfinal Thursday against No. 2 seed Langley Christian, a team they have not faced this season, but one whom Evans feels is a lot like his own.
“They have an outstanding post player (Katelynn Mallette) and we do, too,” he began, “and they have great shooters and so do we. It should be an excellent game.”
QUADRANT D
VERNON 98 CHARLES HAYS 31
LANGLEY — Megan Roualt poured in 27 points, hitting five treys and dishing nine assists against just a single turnover as the Okanagan champion Panthers toppled Prince Rupert’s Rainmakers.
Roualt was just one of three 20-plus performers for the Panthers.
Brianna Falk added 22 and Mackenzie Horst 20 as Vernon shot 47 per cent from the field over a first half it led 51-12 at the break.
Ruby Mason led the Rainmakers with 17 points.
WINDSOR 58 G.W. GRAHAM 50
LANGLEY — The Windsor Dukes didn’t come to the provincial tournament as a favourite.
In fact as the No. 11 seed, the North Vancouver school which had to win a wildcard game just to make the field of sweet 16.
On Wednesday it was ‘put up’ time for the Dukes, and they answered the bell with clutch shot making and tenacious physical play to defeat Chilliwack’s G.W. Graham Grizzlies.
“We’re bracket busters, baby,” said Windsor head coach James Legault. “We knew going in that it was going top be physical, and in the end, we wore them down with our physicality.”
Leading that charge were the Dukes’ 5-foot-9 point guard Devon Wood, and 6-foot forward Madison Legault.
The pair bring power to the Windsor attack with their determined dribbling, and both wound up scoring 22 points, with Wood grabbing 12 rebounds and Legault 11.
In the fourth-quarter stretch, Legualt drained a late trey, a shot with almost no arc, and it stood as the difference in the end as the Grizzlies’ 6-foot Grade 10 star Deanna Tuchscherer scored a late barrage of points, including stepping up to the free throw line to complete a four-point play.
Tuchscherer, who was saddled with four fouls after picking up back-to-back infractions early in the fourth quarter, played her best to close out the contest and finished with 21 points and 12 rebounds. Guard Jaya Bannerman scored 12.
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