TRIPLE-A
No. 4 NORTH DELTA 66 No. 13 WELLINGTON 45
LANGLEY — Just before the half, in a game the North Delta Huskies were already dominating, one of its starting seniors let everyone wearing the school’s traditional black-and-gold that there would be no rest in his team’s quest to return to the provincial Elite 8.
First Amarpreet Lalli stepped up and knocked down a three-pointer.
Then he ran back down the floor on defence, got a steal and went in for an uncontested lay-in a second before the halftime clock expired.
The back-to-back scores put the Huskies up 38-19 at the break and carried the South Fraser zone champs to an eventual 66-45 win over Nanaimo’s Wellington Wildcats.
Lalli’s hustle, point guard Harvey Hothi usual display of offensive wizardry and a zone defence that choked and strangled virtually every inch of open space on the LEC Centre Court floor wound up carrying the day as North Delta advanced to meet their goal of a date in the quarterfinals, this one tipping off Thursday 7 p.m. against the Eastern Valley champion MEI Eagles of Abbotsford.
“We just told our guys to work hard on defence and make sure they know their rotations,” said North Delta head coach Jas Hothi of the effectiveness of the zone. “They had a really good player, No. 23 (forward Grayson Ritzand) and our goal was to try and shut him down… they are a good, tough strong team so we had to match their intensity.”
Indeed, Ritzand was held well below his regular-season scoring average, finishing with 18 points, but it wasn’t for lack of effort and the 6-foot-5 Grade 10 sensation did everything in his power to try and find places in the half court in which he could reach into his bag of moves.
Coach Hothi wasn’t about pass along privileged information about his zone, saying “Magicians don’t give up their tricks” but he was more than willing to talk about the role Lalli has built himself up to play at a time of the season when toughness and versatility are every bit a magic power themselves.
“Last year we had a guy named Kristian Cabico who would come off the bench for us as the energy guy and this year (Lalli) has taken on that role. I’ve coached him since he was in Grade 6 and he does a lot of the little things He plays defence, he hits threes, and he’s come a long way.”
Lalli finished with 17 points, and coach Hothi stressed a big part of the team’s development coming through the zone playoffs was finding ways to energize a deeper group of scorers, aside from the team’s lead scorer, his son Harvir.
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