LANGLEY — Basketball purists love to wax on about our beautiful game, and tell the stories about how it’s one of the last places where no opposition advantage is ever too great for a little ingenuity and a self-belief to overcome.
Yet when the team in question turns out to be the too often times vertically-challenged St. Patricks Celtics of East Vancouver, an outfit which has so consistently turned what others perceive as a shortcoming into an actual strength, it seems that more often than not, it’s the other team which winds up being cast as the underdog.
Sunday’s quarterfinal round here at the 2025 B.C. junior boys basketball championships brought that point even more clearly into focus as the No. 2-seeded Celtics shifted into ‘clutch’ mode down the stretch and topped the tall-timbered, No. 7-seeded New Westminster Hyacks 67-60.
Led by its 6-foot-7 Grade 10 post Djorde Komar, the Hyacks challenged St. Patricks to solve their aggressive zone looks on defence, in the process testing the poise of the Celtics as pin-point passers, opportunistic drivers and cold-blooded shooters.
After qualifying for what is now the junior program’s fifth Final Four appearance in the last six tournaments, the proof, as they used to say, was in the pudding.
St. Patricks will face No. 3 Terry Fox in an 8 p.m. semifinal Monday at the LEC’s South Court.
The Celts’ 7-0 run over the game’s final stages, one punctuated by a massive Dion Gonzales three-pointer to make the score 65-57, was truly the trademark of a program that has anchored itself as one of B.C.’s best.
And when it came to the nuts and bolts of the junior Celtics program he has crafted over the yers, head coach John Boateng was proud to offer some answers.
“Their big man inside is tough and he plays physical down low,” Boateng said of Komar, “but we weren’t too concerned. We’re small, we’ve always been small. Their height posed a little bit of a problem going inside because they played a Syracuse-style zone where they are using their length to try and disrupt, but we just had to get good ball movement. We knew that was the key. That, and have the guys be ready to knock down big shots.”
Both Jericho Labrador and Dhyne Cotin have been key as call-ups to the school’s senior varsity, yet among their own age class, the two guards were nothing if not leaders stepping up to the gravity of the moment.
Cotin went six-of-six from the stripe, hit a pair of threes and finished with a team-high 17 points.
Labrador hit four threes and finished with 16 points.
Keanne Tabag had 10 points while Shane Ahyeng-Vasquez joined both Labrador and Cotin in creating a real defensive presence. Gonzales had three triples and finished with nine points.
Jesmin Krashnica with 14 points and Tayler Rebalkin with 10 joined Komar as Hyacks who scored into double figures.
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