By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
TOWNSHIP OF LANGLEY — Last season, as No. 6 seeds in the B.C. junior boys basketball championships, Surrey’s Holy Cross Crusaders had any thoughts of a deep run to tournament glory dashed on the first day of the competition.
In hindsight, losing to No. 27-seeded Lambrick Park was a classic case of underestimating a tradition-laden program.
Having already advanced past the mis-steps of last season in Saturday’s treacherous two-round opening day marathon, this season’s No. 3-seeded edition of the Crusaders were clearly on high alert when it came time to any signs of danger.
And so when the suddenly-reborn, No. 6-seeded Van Tech Talismen got a pair of free throws to tie their quarterfinal game 33-33 with 32 seconds left in the third quarter, it became pretty clear that a lot of repressed anxiety directly tied to last season’s Day 1 loss were quite suddenly back… living, breathing and bringing back a lot of uncomfort and uncertainty to the present moment.
“I wasn’t coaching the juniors, but I was coaching the grade nines last year,” began first-year Holy Cross junior head coach Logan Mathers, the 2020 Crusaders grad and gritty forward who made his name, at 6-foot-6, as a key rim protector on the hardwood before embarking on a career as a soccer goalkeeper with the Fraser Valley Cascades. “So I have a good connection with a lot of these kids and reminding them of how that felt losing in a game that we feel they never should have lost.”
Put that together with all of the battles the Crusaders faced in both their Surrey and South Fraser playoffs this month, and the result was a battle-tested bunch which seemed to land the perfect figurative counter-punch to begin the fourth quarter en route to a 50-46 victory and berth in the semifinals Monday (8 p.m.) against the No. 2 seeds from Burnaby South.
It’s also the first-ever berth in the B.C. boys junior Final Four for Holy Cross.
“We had a slow third quarter,” said Mathers. “Shots weren’t falling. We made some really good adjustments going into the fourth. I think our defensive intensity started to pick up. It was right at the tie game. That’s when we flipped the switch. We got a quick steal in the full court, and then from there, it was a completely different ballgame, where we just kept our momentum going.”
From that 33-33 tie heading into the final eight minutes of the regulation 32-minute junior contest, the Crusaders proceeded to reel off a 12-2 run, with ‘run’ being the operative word.
Yet even with a 45-35 lead just shy of the final frame’s midway mark, you knew that the Ivan Yaco-coached Talismen would have what amounted to a left hook of the counter-counter variety.
With 1:46 left, Elias Leacock hit a free throw to complete an and-one that pulled Van Tech to within a pair of possessions at 47-42. And with 1:19 left, Tech’s Musa Whelan-Sadike made one of two free throws to cut the gap to 47-43.
Teammate Quinn Todorovic-Audet hit a three to make 49-46, but with the clock winding down, it would be as close as the Talismen would come.
“The toughest part is when guys are fouling and we can’t execute on offence, so that really made it hard for us,” said Van Tech head coach Ivan Yaco, in his first year at the helm of the team. “And again, taking care of the ball, and it’s all really about fundamentals, and we weren’t able to do that against Holy Cross, a really good defensive team, and team that is very good at their execution. We tried our best it wasn’t enough.”
Yet Yaco seemed inspired to continue his work building a more habitual culture based on mastering the basic fundamentals.
Back in the 2008-09 season, Yaco was a senior at East Van’s Sir Charles Tupper Secondary where the Tigers, just emerging as a provincial power, lost out in a win-or-go-home last-ditch qualifier for the then-top-tiered B.C. Triple-A championships.
The team they lost to that year?
None other than the St. George’s Saints, who with the magic of guard Emerson Murray, won five straight games to claim the B.C. crown, including a 63-62 win in the championship over the Vancouver College Fighting Irish.
Your coincidentally cool fact of the day?
That Saints team was coached by Brian Lee, whose youngest child Zane is a Grade 9 player on the Holy Cross team that Saturday beat Yaco’s Talismen.
In fact Mathers credits the fine play of the Grade 9 trio of Lee, Isaiah German and Alvin Dhillon as big reasons for the depth and the explosiveness of this year’s team.
On Sunday, Holy Cross was led by the dual 12-point performances of Ovunda Okechukwu-Amadi and German, and 10 points from Udhav Juneja.
Van Tech was led by the 12 points of Musa Whelan-Sadike. Leacock had 10 points while Satyan Hall and Quinn Audet each had eight.
And about the fact that they’ve gone further than any other Holy Cross junior boys team in school history here at the 56th annual championships?
“It just shows how hard the kids have worked throughout the off-season,” said Mathers. “They’ve really bought into what we’re trying to do as a program, and it’s why we’ve been successful.”
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