BURNABY — Langley’s Brookswood Bobcats rallied down the stretch of the second half to edge Burnaby’s Byrne Creek Bulldogs 91-88 and keep alive their hopes of a fifth place finish here at the St. Thomas More Chancellor Invitational.
The victory propels Brookswood into Saturday’s fifth-sixth final (2:30 p.m.) against Surrey’s Fleetwood Park Dragons, an earlier 61-44 winner over the host St. Thomas More Knights.
“We’re in a really gritty stretch right now of six games in six days,” said Brookswood co-coach Jyoti Pawar, whose honourable mention ‘Cats beat both Robert Bateman and Langley in Eastern Valley Triple A league clashes Monday and Tuesday before opening Chancellor play Wednesday with a 67-61 win over North Vancouver’s Carson Graham Eagles.
On Thursday, Brookswood lost 58-50 to Vancouver’s No. 5-ranked Sir Charles Tupper Tigers.
On Friday, the Brookswood duo of Mason Berekoff, with 24 points, and Evan Kimm with 21, filled it up, especially in the fourth quarter where the duo combined to score 22 points.
Jamie Cameron added 18 points and Kolya Lozowchuk 13 more for the winners.
Bobby Mabeny scored a game-high 27 for the Bulldogs who also got 13 points apiece from Mukhtar Afadish and Adam Muhammad.
“This is the deepest team I’ve had here in 13 years,” said Pawar of the Bobcats, “but we play in a very tough league.”
Consider that No. 1 G.W. Graham is a league foe, as is the Abbotsford triumvirate of MEI, Bateman and Rick Hansen. And from that group, there is likely just one berth to the B.C. championships.
In the earlier game, Fleetwood Park was led by the 25 points of Bhavrup Gosal, as well as 16 from Gurek Sran. Alden D’Souza led STM with 13 points.
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