a St. Thomas More's Logan Ball and Arkin Solis of St. Pat's contest a loose ball during Saturday's championship final at the 2025 Rich Goulet Chancellor in Burnaby. (Photo by Howard Tsumura exclusive property of VarsityLetters.ca 2025. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball

Chancellor 2025: Capacity crowds at St. Thomas More induce a 1980’s flashback for your author! We dissect champion St. Pat’s, runner-up Knights boffo No. 1 v. No. 2 title clash!

BURNABY — One thing I’ve noticed happening a lot more with age, are the number of times I get high school basketball flashbacks while attending games in the here-and-now of this 2024-25 season.

So before we get to the guts of this story, which is centred around the incredible show that both the No. 1-ranked St. Thomas More Knights and the No. 2-ranked St. Patricks Celtics put on Saturday night in the championship final of STMC’s Rich Goulet Chancellor Invitational, I must relate one of those flashbacks, the purpose of which is to cement the notion that what was great about the game 40-plus years ago, is still great today.

Back in the late 1980s, in the Joe Thierman-coached era of St. Thomas More senior boys hoops, I remember reporting on a Chancellor tournament in which the media seating was so tiny (OK, it didn’t exist) and the crowd so massive that I stood on seat of a pretty shaky plastic chair for the entire game, peeking over the set of shoulders in front of me as I reported one of the Knights’ games, one which might not have even been the championship final.

I can’t remember who the home team was playing, but I remember its volume which was, while still on the quieter side of a Motorhead gig at the Kerrisdale Arena, one of the loudest things I’d ever heard.

Which brings us to this past Saturday, and the 2025 senior boys Chancellor final.

Almost four decades later I can report that things are indeed a lot more civilized than before, and the spacious new STMC gymnasium offers photographers, writer and fans alike a lot more room to breathe.

Yet over the course of the Celtics’ 83-79 win over the host Knights, a sell-out crowd which included a sizeable throng of tourists from St. Pat’s, filled the gym to its gills, hung on every possession, and produced enough decibels to take this old reporter back to his twenties.

All of which brings me to where I was going to start pre-flashback: What is the most interesting part of annually dissecting teams as the calendar hits the midway mark of January?

We’re a month away — give or take a few days — from the start of playoffs.

Yes, 2024-25 has already happened that quickly.

And if you apply that mindset before stepping into the gymnasium for a game like Saturday night’s Chancellor final, you’re tempted to believe that you are being bombarded with more storylines than attempted three-point goals.

With league games ready to dominate the stretch drive to the post-season, putting the Triple-A No. 1 Knights on the same floor as the No. 2-Celtics only serves to magnify the big questions each team will carry en route to what could well be a March battle at the LEC for all of the marbles.

And, in the aftermath of an aforementioned 83-79 St. Pat’s win, just what might those questions be?

St. Thomas More’s Zeru Abera keyed a second-half comeback which just fell short against St. Patricks during Saturday’s championship final at the 2025 Rich Goulet Chancellor in Burnaby. (Photo by Howard Tsumura exclusive property of VarsityLetters.ca 2025. All Rights Reserved)

ON THE KNIGHTS

For St. Thomas More, the question is a simple one: Just how much better might this team be if it could play with the same level of desperation it seems to so regularly muster — regardless of its competition — in those 11th-hour, do-or-die scenarios when that big red button finally gets pushed.

“I feel like we’ve had this exact conversation before,” STM head coach Denzel Laguerta sighed following his team’s loss Saturday night. “I think we had the same one following the St. George’s game.”

Of course back in early December at the TBI Super 16, the then-No. 3 Triple-A Knights put together a jaw-dropping 26-4 run to rally from 20 points down (76-56) to defeat the then-Quad-A No. 5 St. George’s Saints 82-80. The next day, STM beat then-No. 4 Quad-A Vancouver College 82-74 in the semifinals.

In Saturday’s Chancellor final, the circumstances were eerily similar to its prior win over St. George’s.

When St. Patrick’s Jakobi Matalabos made a lay-in with 55 seconds left in the first half, the Celtics had built a 19-point lead against the home team at 66-47.

But then, just as the markings in the Hollywood would script would indicate, it was time to ‘Cue Zeru’.

Back in December, Zeru Abera, STM’s 6-foot-3 senior guard, had scored 19 of his game-high 41 points in fourth quarter of his team’s the comeback win over St. George’s.

On Saturday, it all seemed to be headed in the same direction.

With 1:52 left in the game, Aberra drove through the heart of the Celtics defence for a layin to pull his team to within a possession at 77-74.

By that stage, he’d scored 22 of his team-high 27 points in the second half.

Add to that the 11 fourth-quarter points of fellow senior guard Shane Deza, who finished with 21 points, and the low-post presence of Grade 11 forward Logan Ball and all the ingredients of the comeback seemed in place.

“That is him,” St. Pat’s coach Nap Santos said of Abera. “We knew that Zeru was going to have his run. We knew it. But we did enough damage for them to have a hard time coming back.”

Jakobi Matalabos dropped 32 points on the St. Thomas More Knights during Saturday’s championship final at the 2025 Rich Goulet Chancellor in Burnaby. (Photo by Howard Tsumura exclusive property of VarsityLetters.ca 2025. All Rights Reserved)

ON THE CELTICS

To understand what St. Pat’s has become at the B.C. Triple-A ranks is to realize that they are shooting for their third B.C. title in the last four seasons coming off a Final Four loss to the MEI Eagles last March.

On Saturday, about seven weeks into the season, head coach Nap Santos’ team looked every bit the well-drilled and tenacious unit they have resembled throughout their run as B.C. title contenders.

Roles have been embraced and the mantle of leadership ably assumed by its tough-as-leather Grade 11 guard Riley Santa Juana.

“We stuck together as a team tonight,” Santa Juana said after Saturday’s win. “We stuck to tough team defence the whole way and we are staying tough mentally.”

From an intangible standpoint, as Santa Juana says, the Celtics seem to have things covered.

Yet as they fine-tune, a warning to coaches and teams around the province needs to be made because the way its rotation is morphing in the moment, St. Pat’s is going to be a lot more deep and dangerous come March.

The reasons?

As it presented itself to your author Saturday — not standing atop a cheap plastic chair but while seated behind a desk chair and table carried for me into the gym (limp a lot, it helps) — the basic changes stem from two players.

The one most impossible to miss was the aforementioned  6-foot-4 senior Matalabos, whose purpose and desire on the floor Saturday reached a level where he was the title game’s best player… the kind of player that a 32-point performance just seems to follow.

And everyone noticed.

“(St. Pat’s) are led by their point guard Riley and Jakobi,” remarked St. Thomas More head coach Laguerta afterwards. “Jakobi, I was surprised… because that is what I always expected him to do. He was really aggressive today and when he has a streak like he had today, along with Riley and the way that their role players all defend, they are really hard to stop.”

Matalabos opened with a three, then just threw himself into the grind, collecting deuces by the bucket before capping off a 9-for-9 free throw night with six straight fourth-quarter makes from the stripe.

Added coach Santos of his senior: “He was awesome. We have all been trying to get him to be tougher. He is such a nice kid, and being nice, he doesn’t want to be that aggressive some times. We’re trying to get that out of him. And he’s awesome at the free throw line. Even Riley said ‘Let’s get it to Jakobi for the free throws.’ We all know that when it comes to free throws, he is money.”

St. Pat’s Grade 10 call-up Dhyne Cotin showed his stuff at the senior varsity level against St. Thomas More during Saturday’s championship final at the 2025 Rich Goulet Chancellor in Burnaby. (Photo by Howard Tsumura exclusive property of VarsityLetters.ca 2025. All Rights Reserved)

The other player just now dinting the rotation?

He’s a 6-foot junior varsity call-up named Dhyne Cotin, and the level of self-belief the kid showed in driving baseline to sink a tough reverse bucket with 1:26 remaining to put his team on top 79-74 really told it all.

“He is fearless, gives us great energy and just makes a difference out there,” said Santos after Cotin, whose family moved to Canada from The Philippines prior to this season, finished with eight points and was named a Chancellor first team all-star.

“His name is Dhyne, but I call him dynamic,” added Santos.

Santa Juana was named tourney MVP, while Matalabos joined Cotin on the first team, which also included STM’s Abera, Deza and Jacob Oreta who finished with 11 points.

Pratham Bhogal (left) helped lead the Rick Hansen Hurricanes past the G.W. Graham Grizzlies during the third place Saturday at the 2025 Rich Goulet Chancellor in Burnaby. (Photo by Howard Tsumura exclusive property of VarsityLetters.ca 2025. All Rights Reserved)

THREES GALORE

Abbotsford’s Rick Hansen Hurricanes hit 17 three-pointers en route to an 87-74 win over Chilliwack’s G.W. Graham Grizzlies in the third-place contest.

“I’ve got two to three kids, who, if they are open and they don’t shoot it, we’re going to have a problem,” smiled head coach Joban Pandher, a former star player with the ‘Canes through the 2015-16 season.

Pratham Bhogal (27 points, four threes), Armani Sidhu (22 points, six threes) and Harjap Thind (21 points, five threes) counted 15 triples between them as Hansen weathered an 11-0 fourth-quarter run by the Grizzlies.

Jeet Dhaliwal (nine points) and Gurtej Dhillon (eight points, two threes) also scored for the ‘Canes.

Grade 11s Beckett Goertzen with 24 points, and Owen Baarda with 18 led G.W. Graham.

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.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *