By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
LANGLEY TOWNSHIP — One of the greatest B.C. junior boys basketball champions of all-time?
Even if the fantasy archive with all of the answers actually existed, the one where every score of every game of every season for the past 56 years had been recorded for posterity, so much of it would still be subjective.
So maybe it’s better that in lieu of the ability too make all-time pronouncements, that the 2025-26 Vancouver College Fighting Irish simply take its rightful place, as of Tuesday night, in the folklore of our province’s grand boys high school game.
Koen Li, the Irish’s seemingly unstoppable 5-foot-9 point guard, was his usual splendid self.
He did it all at both ends of the floor, moving at lightning pace while scoring a team-high 17 points and using his vision to elevate each and every one of this teammates en route to being named tournament MVP as the No. 1-seed Irish beat the No. 2-seed Burnaby South Rebels 73-60 in the 56th annual title game, staged at the Langley Events Centre’s sold-out South Court.
“I’ve been dreaming of this moment, I’ve been watching the provincials since I was a little kid,” the Grade 10 would say afterwards, “so coming here now, now it’s my turn to win. It’s just an unreal feeling.”
Every bit as ‘unreal’ as the team’s perfect 34-0 season, one that now stands on the same hallowed ground as Vancouver’s College’s 2022 B.C. junior championship team. The Irish also beat Burnaby South, that season 51-45, to complete a 31-0 campaign.
And while Li may be soft-spoken off the court his play on the court takes a back seat to no one, especially if you’re an opposition defender whose first goal is to stop his habitual penetration.
“He’s completely impossible to guard off the dribble, at least in a one-on-one scenario,” said Burnaby South head coach Cody Cormack whose team lost to the Irish for the third time this season. “I’m a little bit disappointed in how we guarded the ball screens. We talked about taking a different approach than what we saw today, but he’s a great player. He does a great job reading the floor, makes the right passes, gets into the lane, finishes around the hoop, can hit the outside jump shot. And when you’re a triple-threat, when you can score on all three levels, it’s really tough to figure out what you’re gonna do to slow him down.”
And while it’s of little consolation to the Rebels, it is interesting to note that the pluck and mettle they showed en route to the 13-point loss meant that they were the toughest out Vancouver College has had since mid-January, or a span of over five weeks.
Ever since the Irish beat PoCo’s Terry Fox Ravens by 19 points in the final of the North Shore Invitational back on Jan. 17, no team had come within 30 points of them until Tuesday.
And for Vancouver College, coming in hot out of the gates helped them once again gain important early first-half traction.
In Monday’s 72-36 semifinal win over Brookswood, Grade 10 wing Ren Hethrington hit three threes in the second quarter to get his team on a roll.
On Tuesday, there he was again this time hitting three treys in the first quarter, the third giving his team a 21-6 lead late in the frame.
VC later restored that 15-point lead at 25-10 early in the second quarter, but then the Rebels went on a 21-9 run over a span of about six minutes, making it 34-31 when Nathaneal Osei-Boadu made a lay-up 1:35 from the break.
From there, however, they never got closer.
The Irish opened the second half on a 17-2 heater, with the Rebels only points over that span coming from a pair of free throws.
Osei-Boadu, who scored 13 points in a losing cause was later named the tournament’s Top Defensive Player.
“That was the closest game we’ve had in a while,” Irish head coach Siamak Salehi said, “and I’m glad the guys came through with that extra little bit of pressure where it’s like ‘Okay, they’re pushing back. They’re not just gonna roll over for you, right? So how are you going to be able to compete with that?’ And they competed amazing.”
As tough as it is to comprehend, it was the first game they’d played in the last 38 days in which they didn’t win by at least 30 points.
Again, it’s the stuff of legend.
“Coming into the tournament, there was a bit of pressure, because when you’re expected to win, it’s a little challenging,” admitted Li. “When every team has nothing to lose when they play you, every team wants to beat you. you have a target on your back. So it becomes a little challenging, but I’m glad we stuck through it.”
And with so many options to chase on the floor, it’s impossible to stop all of them. The key from the Irish perspective, is to realize who is open and allow that player to feature his skills.
On Tuesday, that job fell to one of the team’s defensive aces, starting off-guard Lucas Villanueva, who found a way to score 16 points and giving the Li-Villanueva starting backcourt duo a combined 33 points on the night.
And to that total, you can add a combined 23 points from the starting 6-foot-6 twin tower attack of Bruce Williscroft (10) and Balshaan Dhaliwal (13).
With each player’s strengths complimenting those of the other, their combined presence became one of the team’s most dominant traits.
“I mean, me and Bruce have different playing styles, but we know how to play together and I think that’s what makes us like such a good dynamic duo,” said Dhaliwal, still just 15 years of age.
Burnaby South’s Cormack provided the perfect read of Irish, whose main regular rotation — guards Li, Villanueva, Jack Houser, Alejandro Lando, wing Hethrington and posts Williscroft and Dhaliwal — are almost like the seven perfect pieces of the puzzle.
In whatever combination of five Salehi seems to choose, their defining tenets were constantly represented without a dip in play.
“They do a great job creating extra possessions,” Cormack added in the postgame. “It’s really hard to keep that pair of big men off the boards. Actually, they rebound well across the board, to be honest with you. And so when you play 24 seconds of strong defence, and then you give up an offensive rebound, and all of a sudden, you got to play another 16 seconds of defence, especially when you’re not overly deep, you get yourself into a position where you’re playing 40 or 50 seconds of defence at a time. It really takes a lot of the wind out of you. And I think they do a really good job of that.”
Nolan Ellis led the Rebels with a game-high 22 points, while Grade 9 point guard Caelan Raelova added 14 more.
What does Cormack hope his team remembers about their effort on the floor, say 30 years from now?
“That they never gave up,” he responded. “We were down in more than a handful of games this year against a lot of good teams. And there was always a fight. There was always a claw back. We made sure that we kept the other team on their toes and never allowed them to put their foot on the gas pedal. We made sure that there were speed bumps and barriers along the way.”
Their’s was a fight that was unrelenting.
And on a night with the B.C. title on the line, that fight made it all too real just how accomplished the Vancouver College Fighting Irish really were.
Like we said, it’s dangerous territory to tread on when it comes to being called the greatest ever.
Yet what the true basketball purists would surely agree on is that in any such debate, Monday’s freshly-minted purple and gold champs deserve to be a part of every discussion.
If you’re reading this story or viewing these photos on any website other than one belonging to a university athletic department, it has been taken without appropriate permission. In these challenging times, true journalism will survive only through your dedicated support and loyalty. VarsityLetters.ca and all of its exclusive content has been created to serve B.C.’s high school and university sports community with hard work, integrity and respect. Feel free to drop us a line any time at howardtsumura@gmail.com.
