NO. 1 HOLY CROSS 81 NO. 3 ST. THOMAS MORE COLLEGIATE 51
By GARY KINGSTON (Special for Varsity Letters)
LANGLEY – There was a moment early in the third quarter of Saturday’s Double A final of the B.C. senior girls basketball championships when the desperation and ultimate futility of St. Thomas More’s defensive challenge reached an almost comical level of absurdity.
It looked like a Three Stooges skit or a bit of Dorf on Golf. (Ask your parents, kids.)
Holy Cross’ dynamic 6-foot forward Solene Jackson, who had already scored 20 first-half points en route to a game high 30, was under the basket going up for an offensive rebound put back while being guarded by STM’s two smallest players, diminutive guards Kyla Limon and Demicah Arnaldo, each listed at just five-foot-three
It was, of course, no contest on this play. Jackson’s easy conversion put the Crusaders up 48-32 as the No. 1 seed began pulling away in what would become an 81-51 victory.
“Sometimes when one-on-one doesn’t work, you’ve got to do it as a team, do it by committee,” STM head coach Cassie Lauang, with a wry smile, said of that particular possession. “Post defence is team defence. We did it the best way we could.”
The undersized Knights, who displayed tremendous grit and fortitude in battling to wins through the first three rounds of the tournament, simply ran into a team that they couldn’t chop down to their size.
“Totally,” said Lauang who got 20 points in a losing cause from senior guard Arnaldo. “We knew that going in. They’re not just big. They’re talented, they’re smart, they’re skilled and they do all the right things.”
And after a crushing loss in last year’s Double A final, this Grade 12 heavy Crusaders team is now the first senior provincial champion for Holy Cross since 2013.
“It really feels so rewarding,” said Grade 12 captain Alyssia Palma, who was part of a Grade 8 B.C. title team with several of her teammates. “We’ve put in so much time, all the practicing, the team bonding.”
Jackson and the 6-foot-1 Palma were dominant in the front court for the Crusaders. Palma had 12 points and 10 rebounds, while Jackson pulled down an astonishing 25 boards to go with those 30 points for an eye-popping double double.
STM did hang tough for a quarter, trailing just 17-14 after ten minutes, but the Crusaders eventually wore them down with their physicality, finishing with a ridiculous 65-27 advantage on the glass.
“Defensively we had to make our statement, that me and Solene, and even our big guards, that we’re stronger than them, that we could dominate on the boards and use our size to our advantage.”
Guards Isla Iannuzi and Mia Wojciehowski were part of the onslaught by consistently powering into the paint for tough baskets or for kick outs to open shooters. That shooting included dagger-like three-pointers in the third quarter from Lindsay Correa and Chloe Mangalindan, who had each been scoreless to the point when they dropped the bombs from outside.
“We just have kids who can score,” said Holy Cross head coach Amy Beauchamp. “We have trust in every one of them and they know that and they’re ready to shoot it.”
Jackson’s brilliant effort was described as “just a normal day for her,” by Beauchamp. Lauang marvelled that Jackson was “pretty undeniable.
“We tried to make it uncomfortable for her, make it difficult for her. There’s very few people who contain her. She showed why she’s the MVP (of the tournament).
The talented all-arounder did look a bit gassed at times in the second half, but she still was on the floor for more than 35 minutes. Besides her scoring/rebounding double-double she added two assists, two steals and two blocked shots. And when she wasn’t outright blocking shots, she was changing the director of many other shots with her looming presence in the paint.
“This is amazing . . . I’m so proud of everybody,” Jackson said of the win and before she joined teammates in cutting down the net west end of the court.
Prior to that, though, she did have to get a quick dig in at her dad Paris, a former B.C. Lion and a star basketball player at Carson Graham high school.
“He brags about it. He’s like ‘Aw, I was better.’”
But he never won a title
“I have a title now,” said a beaming Jackson. “So I’m the first in the family.”
