PORT COQUITLAM — They’re named after a legendary stable of professional wrestlers ever assembled, and in a manner of speaking it’s actually very fitting because any time they’ve found themselves on the figurative ropes, a tag-team mentality has just seemed to take over.
In a nutshell, that’s the best way to sum up the the quartet of West Vancouver Highlanders senior boys basketball players known as The Four Horsemen.
“Not the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, of course,” West Van head coach Paul Eberhardt said Monday, a couple of days after Highlanders’ foursome of Max Fraser, Calvin Kuzyk, Finn Chapman and Zayed Ahmed put a collective body slam on the rest of the competition en route to the Terry Fox Legal Beagle championship title Saturday night in Port Coquitlam.
“But back in the day, they were this group of dominant wrestlers led by Ric Flair,” explained Eberhardt as a means of enlightening his inquisitor. “They called themselves the Four Horsemen, so kiddingly, that’s what I dubbed the boys.”
All jokes aside, West Vancouver’s Horsemen have helped the Highlanders build an enviable gallop three weeks into the new year, one which saw them rise to No. 2 when the latest Quad-A Top 10 provincial rankings were released Wednesday.
During a three-day test of guile against equally blue-chip talent, the former No. 4-ranked team put together a master class on winning the tight ones against some of the very best from their own top-tiered class.
West Van opened with an 86-84 win over then-No. 9 Kelowa, beat then-No. 8 Semiahmoo 74-73 in overtime in the semifinals, and finished things off with an 80-72 overtime win over then No. 1-Oak Bay in the finals. This week, Kelowna, Semiahmoo and Oak Bay are ranked Nos. 9,8 and 3 respectively.
“I would like to say that great coaching won the games but I had nothing to do with hitting game-tying jumpers and tough fadeaway threes with a guy in your face,” Eberhardt said when asked about having to rally from 20 down to win at the buzzer in its opener against the Owls, then find a way to win in overtime on back-to-back nights to claim the title. “These guys just kind of found a way to win. I think the thing about this group that is interesting to note is that we have these four guys who are capable of stepping up at a certain time.
“Calvin (Kuzyk) was really good for us and led us big time in our first two games,” Eberhardt said of his Grade 11 point guard Kuzyk, who drained a long two-pointer (with his foot on the three-point arc) with 1.2 seconds remaining which forced overtime against Semiahmoo.
“He was tired and his shot was a little off in the finals,” the coach continued, “but he found other guys, and the other three guys stepped up. Max Fraser really came up big time, Finn Chapman hit some big threes down the stretch, and Zayed, who is our big defensive guy… he hit a big three when we needed it. I think it’s nice in that we have more than one option able to step up and help us out.”
In the final against Oak Bay, Fraser scored 30 points and was named the tournament MVP. Chapman added 25 more.
All of that said, Eberhardt knows that the 2023-24 season may define itself as one of the most parity-filled campaigns in recent memory.
“At the very start of the year, I looked around when we went to Heritage Woods tournament where they have a lot of good teams, and you had a team like Burnaby South (this week No. 6),” Eberhardt says. “They weren’t even ranked at the time, and they beat us by two… then they lost (to then-No. 1) Oak Bay by two points.
“I said to my coaching staff right then and there ‘Hey guys, there are eight or nine teams that can win this year.’ I really believe it.”
The Highlanders won’t get a slew of back-to-back-to-back challenges the rest of the regular season like they got at the Legal Beagle, so the tight nature of all three it played last week bodes well for what is likely to come in the post-season.
Until then, its two biggest games before playoffs will likely come when they face their traditional rivals from North Vancouver.
No. 2 West Van hosts No. 10 Handsworth on Jan. 23, then plays the visitors role on Feb. 6.
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