LANGLEY — We’ve gone final here at the Langley Events Centre.
Great games were on display at all four tiers.
Thanks for your loyalty to Varsity Letters and your patience as we get stories and photos on line as quickly as possible.
A huge thanks to our writers tonight: Gary Ahuja, Dan Kinvig and Gary Kingston.
As well to LEC photographer Ryan Molag for committing his time to the first three 1A, 3A and 4A semifinals of the card.
Thanks as well to Dan Kinvig for pulling double-duty with camera at the 2A tier, to Vancouver Sports Pictures’ guru Paul Yates for taking the time to shoot images with no guarantee of their inclusion during to a number of uncertainties we faced, and to Caitlyn MacDonald, making her first trip to the provincial boys tournament and having her first photos ever published on out site.
Caitlyn worked the Spectrum-Mt. Boucherie game at 4A, and then the dramatic MEI vs. Wellington game at 3A.
And of course, thanks to you all for believing in a website from a guy who thinks this stuff is a World Series unto itself.
Good night and be with you Friday from Langley
Howard Tsumura
B.C. SENIOR BOYS
79TH B.C. CHAMPIONSHIPS
LANGLEY EVENTS CENTRE
SOUTH COURT, CENTRE COURT, ARENA BOWL, FIELD HOUSE
QUAD-A
DAY 2
FINAL 8 ROUND
TOP HALF DRAW
No. 2 DOVER BAY 95 vs. No. 7 HOLY CROSS 72
LANGLEY — Joe Linder did so many crazy things on Thursday that any amount of tallying really couldn’t do it justice.
“I kind of lost track of how much he was actually doing,” smiled his cocah, Darren Seaman, after the No. 2-seeded Dover Bay Dolphins of Nanaimo at times shot the ball as if in the midst of a dream state, topping a tough-and-ready Surrey’s Holy Cross Crusaders 95-72 to earn a berth in the Friday Final Four here at the 79th annual B.C. senior boys Quad-A basketball championships at the Langley Events Centre,
“What an amazing game for him,” Seaman continued of the Grade 10 guard. “You could tell he was in his groove and so we just let him go.”
It was a game made for the full box score, but in absence of the total compendium, let’s just say Linder passed every eye test out there with a game-high 37 points, including seven of his team’s 15 threes on the day.
And how about the points off steals, or the way he orchestrated, with aplomb ,one of the most deadly fast-break offence in the province, and then so often got into the paint to invite contact for and-ones and more?
Or perhaps most impressively, that he came out of his team’s halftime locker room and scored the Dolphins’ first 14 points of the third quarter, effectively sending the Nanaimo crew to what will be its first ever Quad-A Final Four?
“It just came to me in the moment, just getting open shots and finally getting some shots to fall,” he said when informed of the exactitudes of his second-half opening heroics.
Joe and his talented Grade 12 brother Frank Linder (27 points) combined for 64 points, surely one of the highest brother-brother combos as far as points scored in tourney history.
“It’s really cool when we can knock down the three-pointer,” Joe Linder added. “I feel like we’re a pretty unstoppable team, especially with our size inside.”
The Dolphins got back-to-back three-pointers from Frank Linder to close a frenetic first quarter with a 33-21 lead.
Dover Bay then got on a true three-point roll, knocking down back-to-back-to-back threes over a span of 3:03 in the second quarter.
First, Van Suiter fading at the arc, then Evan Slater from the baseline, and finally Frank Linder, with what was at that point, his fourth triple of the game.
With 2:57 left in the half, the barrage had the Dolphins in front 47-30.
The first quarter was played a such a flat-out pace that the two teams barely had time to catch a breath, something everyone took advantage of when Frank Linder shot the game’s first free throws with 1:06 left in the first quarter.
And in this, the 40th anniversary of the three-point shot in B.C. high school boys basketball history, it seemed only fitting that the two teams fill it up from behind the long line.
Holy Cross hit 12 of their own for a total of 27 on the game, led by the expert marksmanship of Grade 11 guard Logan Mirkovich who finished with a team-high 24 points and seven made threes.
Okezi Urefe added 16 points for the Crusaders and Max Mathers another 10. Van Suiter had a dozen for the winners and Evan Slater another 11. Hudson Trood scored nine.
The win pushed the Dolphins into Friday’s 8:45 p.m. semifinal against the Terry Fox Ravens.
No. 6 TERRY FOX 92 No. 3 VANCOUVER COLLEGE 83
By HOWARD TSUMURA (Varsity Letters)
LANGLEY — It was back on the first day of the 2024-25 B.C. high school basketball season that the young Terry Fox Ravens travelled to South Vancouver and took what you can only describe as a figurative roundhouse right to the chops.
Pow!
Final score: Vancouver College 108 Terry Fox 63.
Factor two more losses to the Fighting Irish in between before the two teams would meet again, this time in the Final 8 of the B.C. senior boys Quad-A basketball championships, and you’d have just figured destiny would simply take its course.
And that belief seemed more a certainty Thursday when Vancouver College built a 20-point (42-22) lead just before halftime over a Ravens team which was clearly lacking a spark.
“But hey, we play for Terry,” offered Ravens’ venerable head coach Rich Chambers, referring of course, to the Canadian icon who formerly attended the school.
And in one of the remarkable comebacks in recent tourney history, these Ravens indeed did “…play for Terry.”
Not only that, its eventual 92-83 victory was delivered with such jaw-dropping change of flow, that it was as if the basketball gods above had pulled a lever and directed momentum to flow in the exact opposite direction.
Marvin Reyes, the Grade 10 guard who last season helped lead a large rotational core of these senior varsity Ravens to the B.C. junior title, also under the coaching of Chambers, busted out with a game for the ages.
Reyes let the three-ball rain down like so much pelting tumult, all a part of an act-of-nature turning of the tide. In the end he finished with a game-high 41 points.
“We just wanted it more,” he said. “We knew we were hungry and that we wanted a win. This was our get back game. We were 0-3 (versus Vancouver College on the season heading in) so we really wanted that win.”
Trailing 52-46 but in the midst of an 8-0 run just past the midway mark of the third quarter, Reyes knocked down back-to-back triples that all but signified that this was an uprising with no apparent ceiling.
Reyes went on to add three more shots from beyond the long line in the fourth quarter.
“The best he’s shot it in two years,” gushed Chambers said of Reyes. “I am astounded. He was playing out of his mind.”
Factor in 6-foot-4 fellow Grade 19 Jayson Ikani, the forward who scored 15 of 17 points in the second half by feasting on inside contact, and Grade 11 guard Korbin Lonquist who added 15, and the Ravens produced 92 points, stunning for a team which is more times than not, is content to slow down the tempo and grind out low-scoring wins.
Ashton Wong led the Irish with 25 points, Andres Garcia added 19 more, while Gianluca Tognetti added 10.
The Ravens second loss to the Irish came Dec. 5 in the Final 8 round of the TBI’s Super 16 draw Dec. 5 at the LEC. And that was followed by a 95-87 OT defeat at the hands of VC at the Ravens own Legal Beagle Invitational in early January.
Yet that 45-point opening-night loss is a sure marker to Chambers of what the guiding principles in place are for a senior varsity team under his watch.
“I think Terry Fox basketball is about a process,” he began. “We play all the tough teams and we get our ass kicked, right? Even in league we finished third, but we kept grinding it out, and then won the Fraser North.
“But I never thought we’d be here, though.”
The victory sends the Ravens into Friday’s Final Four, 8:45 p.m. nightcap against the No. 2-seed Dover Bay Dolphins of Nanaimo.
BOTTOM HALF DRAW
No. 5 ST. GEORGES 88 No. 13 ABBOTSFORD 58
LANGLEY — Vancouver’s St. George’s Saints have always been a part of the derby here at the B.C. senior boys Quad-A basketball championships.
The problem they’ve had is breaking out of the pack.
On Thursday, however, facing a team riding the wave of an emotional high, the 2024-25 Saints came out with clinical defensive focus on their way to an 88-58 win over the Cinderella, No. 13 seed Abbotsford Panthers.
The victory sends the Saints to their first Final Four since 2013 when the legendary Bill Disbrow was coaching the team. It’s head coach Guy da Silva’s first Final Four trip since taking over duties five seasons ago.
In Thursday’s opening round, of course, Abby’s Parnaam Sandhu hit 11 triples as part of a hurricanbe-force 41-point performance which lifted the Panthers past No. 4 seed Tamanawis of Surrey.
In a lot of respects, that’s the last kind of team you want to be facing with a berth to the B.C. semifinals on the line.
“Defintely,” agreed da Silva. “I watched that (Abby-Tammy) game and then again twice on tape to get ready and tonight I thought our guys did a great job executing the game plan.
“I thought (Tamanawis) let (Sidhu) get cooking and he’s really the guy that goes for them so we just said that we’re going to face guard him real tough.”
Just so happens, St. George’s has the perfect, under-the-radar, defensive-fuelled player ready to jump at just such an assignment.
“I put my best defender, Kosuke, on him,” da Silva said of senior guard Kosuke Matsubara. “He doesn’t get a lot of points. He doesn’t get a lot of press. But he is a true warrior. (Sidhu) didn’t have an inch today because (Matsubara) was in his pocket all day. And that was the key. We took him out, and then let the other guys get into transition.”
On the other side, Abby head coach Kyle Claggett says his team is relishing the opportunity to take in every experience the tournament has to offer.
Obviously disappointed with the result, he’s positive about the rest of the week and how it has laid a pathway to next season.
“They call it March Madness for a reason, a 13 seed coming in, and St. Georges has probably the best player in the province in Dorian,” Claggett said of Saints’ 6-foot-6 senior guard Dorian Glogovac, who on this night finished with a co-team leading 18 points, well below his season average. “He is a three level scorer, and I think he is one of the top three in the province.
“When we guarded him, he was finding the kick out, hitting cutters, and my guys are a little inexperienced. We have a lot of Grade 11s and our Grade 12’s this year didn’t make it last year. Our whole goal this was to come here, win a game and from here on out, we’re just trying to get one more.”
Inno Decottis also scored 18 for St. George. Willem Urban added 18.
Harshaan Bai had 18 points to lead the Panthers, while Sidhu had 13, hitting three triples, all in the second half.
For da Silva, making his first Final Four at Saints raised an interesting question: Did he think this was the year his team could break out and get to Friday with a title pulse still beating?
“I’m not going to lie, I think that every year,” he said. “That is part of being a high school coach… your belief in your boys and I always believe. I think we‘ve had some performance anxiety and I wouldn’t say this is the best team I’ve brought here in the last four years.
“Coming in as No. 1 seed (2022) and getting knocked out by Walnut Grove we learned our lessons, But I always think we can get there if you always preach team first. We had an ugly win yesterday (81-66 over Lord Tweedsmuir) but we were able to settle down and to play with so much more joy.”
No. 1 SPECTRUM 77 vs No. 8 MOUNT BOUCHERIE 59
By HOWARD TSUMURA (Varsity Letters)
LANGLEY — The 2024-25 season still has two more days left, but rest assured, when B.C. hoop historians dust off the pages in say, 25 years from now, one thing will stand out regardless of who plays for all the B.C. Quad-A marbles on Saturday.
The Vancouver Island championship battle is a script line familiar enough that even those with anything approaching a mild, passing interest in the machinations of the B.C. high school game probably know about.
The part of the whole equation not really discussed are the ways in which that two-spots-for-three-teams battle, involving Spectrum, Dover Bay and Oak Bay, was likely as intense or more than some actual games at the B.C. tournament.
Qualifying out of that maelstrom, then having to raise your level of play as the top two seeds in the entire 16-team B.C. draw is potentially tricky to navigate.
But following his team’s 77-59 win over Kelowna’s No. 8 Mt. Boucherie Bears, Thunder head coach Tyler Verde was confident that his team’s tried-and-true internal belief system was helping his players stay the course with the berth in Saturday’s title game now one victory away for the defending B.C. champs.
“Honestly, we finished Islands and we’re in the locker room and we celebrated, but then it’s ‘Oh, we’re not done.’ It was quick and short. We’ve got four games left. We were happy to win Islands but we know that we want to win this having done it last year. The guys were amped up all week in practice. The moods were high and they were really excited to get going.”
Of course, even a No. 1 seed can’t make the draw to order.
And after a routine win over No. 16 Mt. Baker on opening day they drew a Mt. Boucherie team which was likely the second-least known team of the Quad-A bunch.
Contenders and favourites, however, often times are forced to face unknown, and in this instance the Bears were a worthy foe.
“Watching their game against Heritage Woods (a 95-85 Bears win) was kind of all I needed to see in terms of a scout,” said Verde. “But we knew they’d be scrappy, we knew they had some kids who hit some shots, but again, for us, it’s just doing our thing. We know if we play sound, good defence we’re going to be tough to beat.”
By midway through the third quarter, the Thunder had built a 20-point gap and led by 27 at 77-50 before Mt. Boucherie scored the final nine of the contest.
Justin Hinrichsen scored a team-high 28 to lead Spectrum while J Elijah Helman added 16 and forward Tyler Felt 16.
“They played physical on Tyler and he needs to get used to that because that’s going to be a lot of the rest of his career” said Verde of his big man, off to play for the Victoria Vikes next season.
“I think we came out a little nervous maybe because yesterday maybe wasn’t as much a game for us. It’s always tricky to get up for a game but we got going, and defensively we were excellent.”
Hayato Miyazaki, who Verde called “…a heck of player,” poured home a game-high 31 for Mt. Boucherie with five triples.
Noah Watters added 11 and Bennet Messer 10.
The Thunder face St. George’s in a 7 p.m. semifinal Friday.
It will be their first meeting since Spectrum defeated Saints 78-73 in Duncan in the finals of the Welcome Back invitational in late November.
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