No. 3 WEST VANCOUVER 67 No. 17 R.E. MOUNTAIN 59
By Howard Tsumura
LANGLEY — Andrew Steinfeld, where are you?
You know I’m old school, but more than that, just plain old.
And so I ask again, Andrew Steinfeld where are you?
Back in the spring of 1988, in one of the most organically-grown stories of the B.C. boys high school basketball championships, the big, bruising Mountain man carried his unknown Eagles into the Fraser Valley championships at Simon Fraser, and later to the B.C.’s at the PNE Agrodome, in what until Wednesday was the Eagles’ last trip to the boys senior provincials.
And for so much of No. 14 Mountain’s opening-round clash with No. 3 West Vancouver, it appeared the underdog Eagles might be in line for one of the biggest opening-round upsets in recent tourney history… something the 6-foot-8, crew-cut wearing Steinfeld would have loved.
In fact when Mountain forward Eric Nwaubani hit one of two free throws with 8:31 left for a 56-48 lead, the Eagles’ momentum seemed absolutely genuine and their prospects for a quarterfinal game Thursday more realistic by the second.
But alas poor Eagles’ fans.
Mountain’s top two post presences in Nwaubani and Grade 10 centre Mitchell Evindsen both fouled out, and West Vancouver looked in the mirror and realized they were indeed the champs of the Vancouver Sea-to-Sky, this season deepest and toughest zone in the province.
From that point forward, West Vancouver went to work and tied a plaid ribbon on a dominating 19-3 game-closing run en route to a 67-59 win which sets up a 5:15 pm quarterfinal clash Thursday against the winner of Wednesday’s Round one contest between Semiahmoo and Kelowna.
“We’ll talk, we understand what we need to do,” said West Vancouver head coach Paul Eberhardt whose team dodged a bullet. “We are very experienced but sometimes we revert to old habits and today, we were missing shots and not playing hard on defence. Luckily we corrected that and last six minutes we picked up full-man and I think that turned it for us. I probably should have done it sooner. I let them play too much half-court because we sat in a zone.”
The Highlanders, a volume-shooting three-point squad, let their lack of success fester in the mind.
But their ability to break the game open on the offensive end seemed cured quickly on back-to-back threes by Harris Cameron and Calvin Kuzyk, the former’s a frozen rope from the top of the arc, and the latter’s perhaps the clutch make of the contest as the Highlanders took a two possession lead (64-59) on a team that had gone dry from the field.
“When both of our bigs fouled out, we had no one on the court that could play the five,” said Mountain head coach and program architect Kirk Weiss said. “We couldn’t get rebounds and they got multiple shots on offence. And to their credit, they made ‘em.”
Still, the future seems bright at Mountain.
“We are in the developing stage,” he said.
“Overcoming the Walnut Grove hurdle this year was one step towards building what we want to build,” he added of getting past its natural rivals and advancing to the East Valley championship final game where it lost to Abbotsford’s Yale Lions.
Kuzyk led West Vancouver with 19 points, Max Fraser added 18, Zeyad Ahmed 13 and Finn Chapman 10.
For Mountain, Kaizer Nostrum, Soy Ryu and Jeremy Liston each scored 16 points in the loss.
Steinfeld’s 1987-88 team was a team playing on as much emotion as any team entering the B.C.’s in the last 40 years, and Steinfeld, who later played for the legendary Stan Stewardson at Simon Fraser, was selected a second all-star that season at provincials.
That is quite an accomplishment because that year, the Richmond Colts team which won its second-of-back to back titles is considered by many to be the greatest in B.C. high school history.
That Colts team featured Brian Tait and Joey de Wit on the first all-star team and Ron Putzi as the MVP. Seaquam’s Rick Gill and North Delta’s Craig Preece were also first teammers.
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