By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
LANGLEY — One of the toughest tasks for a head coach is to stand on the sidelines of a high-stakes basketball game and to somehow summon the patience to wait for just the right moment to introduce a new, potentially tide-changing wrinkle to its defensive schematic.
Somehow as the second quarter started this past Saturday night at the Langley Events Centre, as the No. 2 Collingwood Cavaliers faced the No. 1 Notre Dame Jugglers for all the marbles in the 2026 B.C. senior boys Double-A championship game, Cavs’ head coach Andy Wong just knew when that time had arrived.
Locked in an 18-18 deadlock with the Jugglers after the first quarter in a game that was a rematch of the Vancouver Sea-to-Sky conference championship final won 72-59 precisely two weeks earlier by Notre Dame at the rival Jugglers’ own East Van gym, Wong made a small tweak that would up having a had a huge ripple effect, keying a massive run which in the blink of an eye sent his team on a 16-2 run, ultimately providing just enough shelter from the impending opposition storm.
The Jugglers, led by high-scoring senior point guard Caleb Parrotta, eventually lifted themselves into a brief lead at 63-61 in the fourth quarter, but the reserves they were forced to tap to mount the comeback later left them sputtering as Collingwood finished the game on a 17-9 run, Wong guiding the team to not only its third B.C. title in the last 10 tournaments, but its second in the last three seasons.
Parrotta, who spent his fall season as the quarterback of the Jugglers football, was by Saturday very comfortable with his helmet off, and at times looked like he could score at will, pouring home 21 of his game-high 32 points in the second half.
In the end, however, Collingwood’s impressive second-quarter run was one of the most impressive tone-setting spans you’re apt to see in a title game.
AN MVP NIGHT FOR ELLIOT MCNEIL
“The night before we played Notre Dame, I woke up in the morning, I think at 1:30 (Saturday morning), and (assistant coach) Jaden (Narwal) had sent his scout from what to prep for Notre Dame,” Wong continued late Monday afternoon.
Whether it wound up identifying the specific defensive actions which ultimately keyed the aforementioned 16-2 run isn’t known, yet it’s likely that the conglomeration of the scouting report from the Jugglers’ 82-59 win over No. 5 King George in the Friday night Final Four, Collingwood’s three prior games with Notre Dame this season in which they went 1-2, and the intel being gleaned during the first quarter of Saturday’s final all dove-tailed in Wong’s coaching gut to start the second quarter.
“We’ve played a combination of man defence and 2-3 zone (against Notre Dame this season),” said Wong when asked specifically about what led to the run. “We had tried some box-and-one on Caleb, and we were trying to see what fit the most by looking through all the game tape.”
In the end, the 2-3 zone was deemed the best strategy, but it needed a small tweak, one which would more quickly put defensive pressure on whomever the ball-handler happened to be, preventing that player from getting downhill. It was clearly designed with Parrotta in mind, a player who can turn a game around himself with his dribble-drive game and his court vision. Yet in the end it was universally successful, and most of all because of the player Wong asked to play high, the ball-hawking 5-foot-11 senior guard and soon-to-be tournament MVP Elliot McNeil.
“Even though it’s a traditional 2-3, we wanted to have one of our guards at the front really really putting some ball pressure up a little bit higher,” confirmed Wong. “And I think that did help in the second quarter just to give us a little bit of momentum and it gave us a lead. Obviously, we knew Notre Dame was going to fight back and they did, but that’s why every basket helps for sure.”
It was a tsunami that lasted precisely 3:36.
During that span, with its zone extended near half-court, Collingwood made five steals, three by McNeil, and every one led to a made basket for the Cavs. Collingwood’s scheme also produced two opposition turnovers which were turned into another four points.
All tolled, McNeil turned two of his steals into his own fast-break lay-ins. He also hit a three-pointer off a steal by backcourt partner Peter Huang who finished with 13 points.
Harry Bell, who scored 21 in the winning cause, hit a jump shot off a steal by forward Jake McAdam, and cashed in on a fast-break laying off a steal by McNeil, whose line score included a team-high 30 points and a game-high six steals.
“It’s something that’s developed for recently,” McNeil admitted afterwards, when the Saskatchewan native who had spent some time at neighbouring Carson Graham in North Vancouver before coming to Collingwood last season.
”I think there has been some added some motivation to win, especially this season,” said McNeil after playing his final high school game. “And I think that defensive play has helped lead us to more points on offence.“
When asked about the second-quarter blitz, Notre Dame head coach Cam Wright, just moments after the loss, was understandably still processing the disappointment he felt for his team.
“That’s a good question, you know,” the classy Wright said after leading the Jugglers to their highest B.C. tourney finish in school history. “I mean, honestly, we’ve seen those boys about three times over the course of the season. This time, they kind of showed different points. And, yeah, (McNeil) did a great job defensively in transition.”
Added Parrotta, who next season is undecided on his school of choice, but indicated he is looking to continue his post-secondary career solely on the basketball court: “Our whole team put so much effort into this. So just being able to share this moment with each other, it’s so special to us and everything that we’ve worked for. I mean, obviously we didn’t get the result we wanted to, but nonetheless, it’s still a successful year, and I think that’s something we can all be grateful for.”
HOW DEFENSIVE LEGACIES ARE BORN
When you win three B.C. titles in a decade, and each time out, your team’s defence is highlighted, an all-important part of your program’s culture stands for all to see.
Back after the 2014-15 season when then-Collingwood head coach Virgil Hill left his post after being hired as the head men’s basketball coach at Simon Fraser, Wong was serving as the team’s assistant coach.
Promoted to the head job for 2015-16, he immediately led Collingwood to its first-ever B.C. senior boys basketball title, capped by a 68-40 win over Victoria’s SMUS Blue Jags in the final, a game in which the Cavs’s defence allowed just four field goals in the first half.
That season, it was a 1-3-1 zone, with current assistant Narwal manning the high position, which so confounded its foes in the title game.
“The cool thing is now he’s come back on our coaching staff,” said Wong of Narwal, who himself played and studied at NCAA Div. 3 New York University. The assistant staff also includes Teresa Ross and Taylor Williams.
Then, two seasons ago, when the Cavs topped Brentwood College 71-64 in the final, it was a junkier but perfectly-fitting diamond-and-one scheme in which 6-foot-4 senior forward James Holm was taken with shadowing the opposition’s top player.
“I want to say (Holm) scored only eight points in the final but he was still named the MVP and that really says something about defining yourself through your defence,” Wong said proudly of what has become a core strength of his program.
A COACHING PATH LESS TRAVELLED
Ask Andy Wong about his own basketball career and the 44-year-old math teacher’s path to three B.C. titles is hardly the conventional one.
A 1999 graduate of North Vancouver’s Windsor Secondary, his high school playing career ended after 10th grade.
Yet his thirst to learn the essence of the coaching trade had only just begun.
In the 1999-2000 season, while a first-year student at Simon Fraser, he helped coach a Grade 9 girls team at Windsor.
“I don’t think we won a game, and then after that I just started coaching the Grade 8 boys at Windsor and kind of started moving up with them.”
By the 2008, he had led Windsor to the B.C. Double-A final where the team lost 81-73 to Britannia in the championship final.
Not too many years later, at the urging of Collingwood’s Hill, Cavaliers’ then-deputy Head of School Bob Corbett, a man with a huge lineage of his own in the B.C. boys hoops world, urged him to consider the opportunity.
“He’s a great basketball person, he’s a great guy around the school and he’s a wonderful teacher because Andy’s just got a great way with the kids,” said Corbett, a former longtime Vancouver College head coach now retired and living in the Okanagan. “He has a way that can just pick up a group of kids.”
And when you ask him to name some of those in the coaching world that he has learned from, the list winds up including a group whose contributions stand as a huge part of the current foundation of North Shore basketball from Sutherland’s Al Rose, to Windsor’s Phil Langley and Ernie Oei, to Carson Graham’s Mike Morgan and Dave Pearce.
And while there are too many names to fully list, all have played their role, either by their example or by their personal instruction, in helping Wong become the coach he is today… the one who just seems to find a way to have his players at their best for the biggest games they play.
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.
