NO. 14 SUMMERLAND 90 NO. 3 SOUTHRIDGE 70
By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
(Note to our loyal readers, due to its historical nature, this story will appear as both a standalone story and as part of out package of Day 1 Double A game reports.)
LANGLEY — Mateo Ducheck is still 16 and hasn’t yet progressed past his ‘L’ or his learner’s licence.
Yet when it comes to driving on the basketball court, few before him at the B.C. high school level have ever had a night like the one that the 6-foot-3, Grade 11 point guard with the Summerland Rockets enjoyed.
On Wednesday, with the B.C. senior boys Double-A championships working its way through an emotion-filled eight-game opening day, the scene along one baseline at the Langley Event Centre’s South Court, quite organically, grew into a something closer to Hollywood paparazzi.
Word had filtered out as to the prodigious scoring abilities of Ducheck, and before anyone knew it, the fact that the No. 14 Rockets were suddenly in full command of the No. 3-ranked Southridge Storm of Surrey seemed to be of little importance.
Of course that was not the case to anyone with a rooting stake in the game, from Storm players and coaches, to their families and their student body.
Yet what Ducheck was doing was so incredible, that quite suddenly, every eye in the house hung on his every move.
Ducheck wound up scoring 59 points to lead the Rockets to a 90-70 victory, and no one here is trying to downplay that aspect. It was the biggest upset of the day.
Yet Duchek’s 59 points put him two shy of the 61 points scored by Greg Devries of Nelson’s L.V. Rogers in a win over Agassiz in the quarterfinals of the 1991 B.C. 2A tourney held in Victoria.
That classifies Ducheck’s total as not only the second highest single-game scoring performance in 2A tourney history, but also the second highest in the tier on the championship side of the draw, a unique and important distinction.
It’s also the most old school performance of that magnitude in recent provincials memory, because Ducheck, who had 32 points by halftime, hit just two three-pointers the entire game. He was 17-of-22 from the free throw line.
“When you get going, you kind of just like get in a flow,” said Ducheck, who last year as a 10th grader, scored 38 points in Summerland’s opening game of the B.C.’s. “So it starts with my teammates hitting me, and then you can just get yourself going and make harder shots.”
Watching Ducheck in action is just another reminder that it’s not always about explosiveness and quicks.
Ducheck never hesitates when he engages in dribble-drive motion, yet there is something unique about the way his combination of stride length and vision allow him to get past his foes as if walking through the raindrops. Kind of like a slow-motion highlight reel happening real time.
Ducheck says he gets compared to current Minnesota Timberwolves guard Kyle Anderson, who by the way, is nicknamed ‘Slow-Mo’.
“My club coach says I go too slow, but I’ve got long steps,” Ducheck says. “I can make it to the rim, yeah. And just not going straight to the net. Like, I’ll make the right play if someone’s wide open, too.”
The B.C. high school records don’t distinguish whether any of its performances were recorded on the championship side of the draw or not.
The most points scored in the four-tier era’s new Triple-A ranks (2014-25) is 49 by Dover Bay’s Luke Linder in 2023.
The most points scored in Quad-A tournament history encompasses the original tier’s time as an open, single tier, as a 2A tier, as 3A tier and now as a 4A tier.
It’s best-ever recorded performances:
Nathan Vogstad, 75 points for Queen Charlotte 2014
Miguel Tomley, 66 points for Tamanawis 2018
Sam Vandermeulen , 58 point for Abbotsford, 1965
It is because records are not complete that no absolute claims can be made. In fact there are no all-time single-game scoring records lists at all for the Single-A tier in the official tournament program, and it’s a 200-page program.
Vogstad, Tomley and Vandermeulen, all electric scorers, able to get in a zone and prove unstoppable, all recorded their performances after their teams had been knocked out of tournament contention. This takes nothing away from how incredible they continue to remain, especially Vandermeulen’s which survived for more than two generations before Vogstad broke it. Tomley’s came on the final day of the tournament in the third-place game against Belmont and it gave him the highest scoring average in tournament history at 44.8 mpg. Vogstad’s was an incredible, breathtaking performance, as the most points ever scored in a B.C. boys high school game included a stunning 11 treys.
Yet points scored when the lights are brightest, when championship dreams are still alive, continue to hold a mythical place in the high school annals.
Thus, without 1A records, but knowing DeVries’ 61 came on the championship side gives Ducheck’s performance a unique distinction as the second-highest known single-game scoring total on the championship side of the boys draw across all tiers in the 80-year history of the B.C. high school basketball championships.
“It’s unreal, and we almost take it for granted what he’s doing because he just does it all the time,” said Summerland head coach Matthew Raimondo, who watched about 10 days ago as Ducheck scored a career-high 61 against South Okanagan of Oliver in the Thompson-Okanagan semifinals. “Like he’s probably as close to 40 a game right now. But the best part of this game is he guarded the other Matteo the entire game, number 14 for them. And really did a good job on him. So we’re tiring him out on both sides of the court and he’s still able to put those numbers up and, you know, it’s pretty incredible to watch it.”
Raimondo was referring to Southridge’s own star, 6-foot-1 senior guard Matteo Cavaleri who still scored a team-high 24 points, albeit in the shadows of one of the top scoring performances in B.C. high school championship tournament history.
Summerland puts its No. 12 seed on the line tomorrow when it faces Thompson-Okanagan rival and No. 11 seed Kalamalka in an 8:45 p.m. quarterfinal at South Court.
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