By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
LANGLEY TOWNSHIP — When you play maybe the best basketball game out of your entire season on its biggest and brightest stage yet, and it happens to push your overall record to 33-0, hyperbole can sometimes be your own worst enemy.
A head coach must always pick and choose his post-game words with care while at the same time still motivating his players from a place of humility.
On Monday, the team that fit all of those superlatives, the No. 1-seed Vancouver College Fighting Irish, beat the No. 4-seed Brookswood Bobcats of Langley in the semifinals of the 56th annual B.C. junior boys basketball championships by a resounding score of 72-36.
With a title game tonight (7 p.m.) back at the Langley Event Centre’s South Court against the No. 2 Burnaby South Rebels still to play, Irish head coach Siamak Salehi was asked specifically how his team managed to put forth such a thoroughly dominant performance.
“You don’t beat the four seed by that much with one or two guys,” Salehi said. “It’s a team effort, and they all came to play today.”
It’s been that kind of a season in the junior boys provincial ranks.
For the last three days, its upper-crust teams have been the ones with deep cores of talent, the kinds of rosters which have not depended solely on one player.
And in that regard, the mindset of these Irish almost seems more 1970s than 2020s.
“The game plan, I think, was just to share the ball equally, you know, play team basketball,” said 6-foot-3 Grade 10 wing man Ren Hethrington, a player with an excess of the ‘clutch’ DNA who seemed to ooze March basketball, even though there’s still five days left in February.
And make no mistake, nothing was more obvious Monday than the defensive mindset of the Irish.
Yet within that environment, Hethrington thrived with a performance that hit the mark on both sides of the ball.
“Ren’s a great player, and possibly one of the best if not the best wing in Grade 10 in the province,” said Salehi of Hethrington, who scored a game-high 15 points in a game which defined balanced scoring. “And he can shoot like no other. I haven’t seen too many kids his age, ever, shoot like he does. And he’s got the tools to go with it. But the thing that impressed me the most was is his defence today, right? He hit those (three second-quarter) threes. He had a couple buckets in the second half, but it was his defensive stops, his ability to help, his ability to get rebounds, and to help Koen (Li) from getting double-teammed full court so he could just play point guard.”
It was identifying roles on defence, doling them out, and then watching them carried out to near perfection.
“We really keyed on number one and number 77,” he said of the Bobcats’ sublime Grade 9 point guard Mason Nohr and it’s powerful 6-foot-7 post Marcus Tyler respectively. “We didn’t want them to get any inside looks. I think we had a great team defensive effort.”
It is a testament to the hometown Bobcats that their talents and schematics struck fear into the Irish coaching staff, and the same can be said with the way Vancouver College rolled out a game plan in which its defensive ethos was even more impressive than the multitudes of ever-developing options which seem too so suddenly sprout from its collective offensive tentacles.
“You know what? Credit goes to Vancouver College,” said Brookswood head coach Randy Nohr. “They played great. I feel bad for our guys because we really didn’t come ready to play, and I’m not sure why. I think maybe it was the moment. But I’m going to give all the credit to Vancouver College. They played great. Their energy, their defence was fantastic. We really struggled to produce good scoring opportunities. And then when we did, we didn’t hit shots.”
Don’t let the final score fool you.
For much of its entirety, it was a tooth-and-nail scrap with the Irish’s survival most dependent on its ability to maintain a 10-14 point cushion.
If it had gotten any slimmer, there was a chance for the dam to burst and for the tide to reverse.
Yet despite offensive highlights like Hethrington’s aforementioned barrage of triples which carried the Irish into half leading 38-22, this one was all about one of the game’s most unheralded credos: That accepting and carrying out roles on defence creates a net-palpable sense of team, one so thick that in its midst, you could almost pull out a butter knife and dab up your morning toast.
“Ren and Koen, they’ve been leading us all year,” Salehi said of both Hethrington and quicksilver starting point guard Li. “They settle us. But I gotta give a shout out to Jack Houser for his defence on No. 1 (Mason Nohr), and Lucas Villanueva for his with his defence on No. 1, and Alejandro Lando with his defence on No. 23 (6-foot-3 forward Tyson Kenyon).
“And then our big man Balshaan (Dhaliwal). He battled with their big man (Tyler) all game. He gave us buckets on the other end. It was a team effort.”
Indeed, where to start.
It’s most succinct to say that in Li, Hethrington and dual 6-foot-6 centres Dhaliwal and Bruce Williscroft, Vancouver College has an aforementioned quartet of which, on a given night, could be the one to lead them in points.
Yet that guard-based trio of Villanueva, Houser and Lando might actually represent the greatest share of the team’s the old-school defensive heart.
On Monday, Houser, despite scoring just six points, was in the running among Vancouver College’s top two or three best two-way players.
Needing to slow the Grade 9 Nohr was No. 1 for the Irish above all else.
“He’s crafty with the ball, and he can shoot the lights out,” Salehi said of Nohr, head coach Randy Nohr’s son. “There aren’t too many kids that age in this province that can shoot like that, and… we were… I just told (coach Nohr), I was nervous for this game. I was nervous. We’ve seen them play, we’ve seen their film. We know they can light it up. I was nervous that (Mason Nohr) would get going and that (Tyler) would get inside and score on us.
And the three-headed group guard group embraced that role. And Houser also has a developing facet as a facilitator which added just another level of depth to the overall equation.
Brookswood was held to just four points in the fourth quarter, and were led by the eight points of Nohr, the seven points of Kenyon and the six of Tyler.
And adding to the intrigue?
Tonight’s game is a rematch of the 2022 B.C. final won by the Irish, who four years ago walked out of the LEC with a 32-0 record. It’s as high a bar as you could have set for the 2026 team at the start of the season, and at 7 p.m. it will be staring them straight in the face.
If you asked any of them now how that feels, the figurative smart money says they’re embracing every part of the challenge.
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.
