LANGLEY — Welcome to Final Four Friday here at the Langley Events Centre.
To the best of our ability’s the Varsity Letters team will attempt to provide live game reports on each of the two B.C. semifinal games being played tonight at this tier.
Timing will all depend on our writing, photographic and broadcasting demands this evening, so please keep checking back. As well, your patience is appreciated!
Yours in basketball: Howard
QUAD A
SEMIFINALS
STORY BY GARY KINGSTON (Special for Varsity Letters)
NO. 1 SEMIAHMOO THUNDERBIRDS 96 NO. 5 KELOWNA OWLS 68
LANGLEY – Ranked No. 1 all season and seeded No. 1 for the Quad A B.C. senior boys basketball provincials, the Semiahmoo Thunderbirds have taken every other team’s best shot for four months.
They know how good they are. They’ve talked openly about becoming the first Semiahmoo team to bring a senior boys title to the school. Talked about destiny and hanging that championship banner.
“We haven’t shied away from anything,” head coach Les Brown said Friday after his squad advanced to the Quad A final with a comprehensive 96-68 win over the No. 5 Kelowna Owls.
“We know the target’s been on our back all year. We’ve been up at the top of the rankings. We want that title. We’re not shy about it. (Other teams) have got to come and get us.
“We’ve been honest about it. On the back of our warmups for this tournament, we’ve got ‘It’s all Uphill From Here.’ So we know that the next game is the most important and we’ve got to achieve that and just try to still be hungry.”
Cole Bekkering, Semiahmoo’s nimble but powerful six-foot-five Grade 11 forward and Friday’s top scorer with 24 points, said the team’s confidence is a product of work ethic and the knowledge that all the pieces are there to complete a championship season.
“It’s just like how many reps we take every day, how much time we’re in the gym altogether. The more you’re in the gym, the more confident you’re going to be on the court in big moments. We’re all here for the big moments and everyone showed up today.”
It started early with dynamic, five-foot-10 guard Torian Lee, he of incredible leaping ability, knocking down three first quarter treys, the last of them part of a 16-4 run that helped the Thunderbirds to a 34-12 lead.
The Owls gave it a valiant try after that, but with six-foot-11 centre Will Keys on crutches after banging knees with a teammate in practice before the tournament, they they had no answer for the ‘Birds inside duo Bekkering and Marcus Flores, the six-foot-seven Grade 12. Flores had 20 points and a game-high 14 rebounds.
“Their bigs killed us,” said Kelowna head coach Harry Parmar. “We just didn’t have a whole lot to offer against them today. (Keys) dislocated his knee bone nine days ago. It might have been different if we’d had him around.”
Semiahmoo led 53-30 at halftime.
A trio of three-pointers by Kelowna early in the third quarter got the lead down to 18 but that was as close as the Owls would get.
“We’re off to the final and that’s what we’ve wanted for 365 days,” said Brown, a nod to the loss in last year’s final to Burnaby South.
Although the road to the final has been relatively easy, Brown insisted his team has been pushed enough to be ready for a tough final matchup against either the No. 2 Oak Bay Bays or No. 6 Fleetwood Park Dragons, who met in the other semifinal later Friday.
“We’ve gotten out to great starts, but teams have fought back,” said Brown. “Kelowna didn’t stop. They kept coming. They got such great shooters. You can never relax. They’re never out of the game.”
That said, a dejected Parmar thought the game was over early.
“In the first five or seven minutes, we just didn’t play with a lot of composure. When you turn it over on them, they get the easy layups. And your heads go down and it just kind of snowballs. Truthfully, it was over after about seven minutes.”
The Owls were led by the 28 points of Nash Semeniuk, while Nate Smith added 14.
Semiahmoo shot 46 per cent from the field to just 35 per cent for Kelowna and won the battle of the boards 46-37. The Owls also committed 24 turnovers to 15 for the Thunderbirds.
NO. 6 FLEETWOOD PARK 73 NO. 2 OAK BAY 67
LANGLEY — For the first time in 77 years, two Surrey schools will meet to decide the B.C. senior boys basketball championship.
And while the No. 1 Semiahmoo Thunderbirds were convincing 96-68 winners over the No. 5 Kelowna Owls in its B.C. Quad-A semifinal clash Friday at the Langley Events Centre, the historic all-Surrey derby needed an upset win to achieve reality.
And that’s just what the No. 6-seeded Fleetwood Park Dragons managed.
Senior guard Aaron Uppal and Grade 11 Izaec Oppal each scored a game-high 24 points, while the entire Dragons’ team put its defensive hearts on the line to turn back the determined bid of Victoria’s No. 2-seeded Oak Bay Bays, winning 73-67 to create the first Surrey vs. Surrey senior boys final since the tournament began in 1946. (Full games details follow)
The historic meeting is all-encompassing enough to include both public and private school teams across all four of the province’s four tiers of competition.
Previous Surrey champions: North Surrey (1976, 1981), White Rock Christian Academy (1996, 1997, 1999, 2003, 2005), Fleetwood Park (2015), Southridge (2016), Lord Tweedsmuir (2019).
The closest, from a geographic standpoint, we have come to an all-Surrey match-up came in 2003 when WRCA faced North Delta’s Seaquam Seahawks in the 2003 final.
North Surrey (’76, ’81) and Lord Tweedsmuir (’19) are the only Surrey public schools to win B.C. titles at the province’s largest tier. WRCA won its first two titles at Single-A and its last three at the top tier, and all five were coached by Scott Allen. Semiahmoo has never won a B.C. senior boys basketball title.
Saturday’s Semiahmoo vs. Fleetwood Park final tips off 7 p.m. at the Langley Event Centre’s Arena Bowl. Fleetwood’s prior championship came in Triple-A, in B.C.’s second season as a four-tiered province.
HOW THE DRAGONS GOT IT DONE
On Friday night, Fleetwood Park scraped and scrapped with Oak Bay before carrying a 30-27 lead into the half in a game in which both teams seemed content to guard each other into submission.
In fact it wasn’t until the third quarter when Uppal and Oppal seized control of the game’s offensive flow that the Dragons were able to pull away.
Oppal, who went 7-of-11 from three-point range, hit his second of three consectutive triples with 8:05 left, giving the Dragons their largest lead of the game at 14 points (61-47).
From there, the Bays pressed hard to make up the gap, with senior scoring star Griffin Arnatt throwing everything he had at Fleetwood Park.
In the end, Arnatt finished with 20 points and 16 rebounds, yet try as they might, Oak Bay never got closer than six points the rest of the night.
“I thought we played one of our best defensive games of the year, similar to how we played them in December,” said Dragons’ head coach Nick Day, referencing Fleetwood Park’s win over the Bays by a near-identical 73-63 score in the semifinal of Oak Bay’s own Gary Taylor Classic on Dec. 16 in Victoria.
“We shot the ball with confidence and we dug in, and that is resilience,” continued Day. And that is what I love about this group.”
The Bays exacted some revenge on the Dragons to even the series 1-1 with a 83-49 trouncing of Fleetwood Park in the second round of Vancouver College’s Emerald Invitational on Jan 20, making Saturday’s third meeting a rubber match with huge stakes.
“It did take us a while but we all knew what had to be done,” said Uppal, a team captain and 6-foot-1 guard who was a key catalyst in finally establishing some finish in the paint against Oak Bay with his passing and his finishing touch around the rim.
“We trusted each other… that, and being a family is what got us to get firing on all cylinders,” said Uppal. “We covered each others mistakes and helped each other out, and once we got it going, we got it going.”
Oppal was the perfect example of how multi-faceted the Dragons could be once they began to establish success through ball movement in and around the paint.
The Grade 11 sharp-shooter, who finished the game 7-of-11 from distance, stepped into five threes in the second half, including three over a fourth quarter in which Arnatt and the Griffins made a valiant effort to reel them back in.
“They say you live and die with the three… that is not completely us,” said Day. “We’ll take our opportunities when they are there, we are not afraid to put it up, but today was more about defence. Oak Bay is an amazing team and to hold them under 70 points says a lot about our team.”
Clearly, Semiahmoo is the favourite in Saturday’s game, especially in context of its 82-56 win over Fleetwood Park in the South Fraser zone championship final played March 3 at Semiahmoo.
If that is the case, Uppal says his team can just go about the task of just continuing to be its best self.
“I feel like we have a lot of momentum going on now,” he began. “There is no pressure on us tomorrow (Saturday). We’re not the favourites. And going in with no pressure, we can go in, play our game, and leave everything on the floor. And no matter what the result is, we will all be proud of each other.”
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.
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.
