LANGLEY — Welcome to Day 1 of the 2025 boys Tsumura Basketball Invitational and our eight Super 16 bracket games.
We’ve gone final for Day 1. Here are all eight game reports, plus tomorrow’s schedule on the championship side of the draw with all games being played at the LEC’s South Court.
Before we get to all of today’s game’s here is our updated look at tomorrow’s quarterfinal bracket:
Top Half
7:45 p.m. — Tamanawis vs. Kelowna
6:15 p.m. — GW Graham vs. Terry Fox
Bottom half
4:30 p.m. — MEI vs. Vancouver College
3 p.m. — Argyle vs. St. Patrick
Here’s today’s game reports:
BOYS
SUPER 16
DAY 1
(Centre Court)
TOP HALF DRAW
QUADRANT A
TAMANAWIS 93 WEST VANCOUVER 45
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — Surrey’s Tamanawis Wildcats returned to its old home-away-from-home at the Langley Events Centre on Wednesday, all set to begin what it hopes will be a long and propsperous run through the championship side of the Super 16 bracket here at TBI 2025.
Accompanying the Wildcats, who topped West Vancouver 93-45 in their opening-round matchup, was the No. 1 Quad-A ranking they have held since the preseason, and one they will now put on the line in a tough quarterfinal matchup Thursday (7:45 p.m.) against the winner of today’s final first-round contest between Kelowna and Oak Bay.
While most of the rest of the province’s elite took part in opening weekend invitationals staged throughout B.C., the Wildcats flew to Edmonton’s St. FX high school and took part in the defending Alberta champion’s own 16-team invitational featuring some of the top teams in Western Canada.
Tamanawis won its first three before losing to the host school, currently ranked No. 1 in the province, in the final, despite building a double-digit lead earlier in the contest.
All of which brings us around to an interesting early-season question.
The Wildcats under head coach Mike McKay have had four teams (2014, 2016, 2018, 2024) advance to the top-tiered B.C. Final Four.
Of those teams, which does the current one most resemble?
“I’d say it would be most similar to 2014,” said McKay of the first great Tammy team, one which lost in the Final Four that season to Sir Winston Churchill.
“It’s very similar, we have like four guys who can score like that team did, but we didn’t really have the (scoring) guys off the bench that we have this year.”
The 2025-26 team?
“Usually we have one or two guys, but going into this game, through our first five games, we had four guys averaging 15 (points) or more,” McKay said of Luka Guzina, Victor Cortel, Anand Sandhu and Gurjowan Cheema.
To put together a season like that 2013-14 team did won’t be easy, but based on Tamanawis’ talent level this season, it’s certainly going to be fun to watch, especially here at TBI where the Wildcats get their first extended look at the best of the rest of B.C.
Guzina, the 6-foot-11 senior, led the winners on Wednesday with 25 points, 12 coming in the opening quarter. Cortel added 16, Sandhu 12 and Cheema 10 to account for all of the team’s double-digit scoring.
West Van hit four treys in the first quarter and stuck around, trailing just 21-15 after the first 10 minutes but were unable to match the deep Tammy rotation.
Damian Coric led the Highlanders with 10 points while Jordan Jessop added eight.
KELOWNA 74 OAK BAY 66
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — The end of volleyball season means the start of the official basketball season for the Kelowna Owls.
That’s the best way to get to the heart of the matter as far as Owls senior boys basketball head coach Harry Parmar is concerned.
Last weekend, with a seven-man skeleton crew, Kelowna did its level best to put a Quad-A No. 2 ranking on the line at the Kodiak Klassic in Port Moody and simply didn’t have the infrastructure to further its cause.
The Owls tumbled four spots down to No. 6 in the Quad-A poll released Wednesday morning, but with key members of its volleyball team free to join their hoops brethren, the execution was decidedly different.
Key to the Owls 74-66 win over Victoria’s No. 8 Oak Bay Bays in the final TBI Super 16 opening round game of Day 1?
The play of two senior guards/volleyball players in Jake McParland and Finn Stewart.
Kelowna opened the game on a 17-4 tear, and then thrived in all the ways that two key additions can make to the consistency and effectiveness of a defensive rotation.
“The Grade 12s, the seniors, getting the seniors back makes everything easier, right?” Owls head coach Harry Parmar said when asked what was different from last week.
“So Finn puts a lot of pressure on the ball and Jake can shoot threes, right? When they came back from volleyball now you have other guys not having to play as many minutes, not like 20 minutes. The younger boys, they’ll have spot time where they’re working hard until they figure this game out a little bit better.”
The return of McParland and Stewart was also a boon to the offence as the pair combined to score 33 points in what was a relatively low-scoring contest.
McParland scored a team-high 17 points while Stewart added 16, a total matched by Logan Parker. Wells Grundy added 14 more.
Oak Bay, which battled to get to within 22-16 at the end of the first quarter (a 14-5 run), showed their quality in flashes but not enough to make up for a massive early deficit in a battle of two provincially-ranked teams.
Simon Wiwcharuk-Burr scored a game-high 19 points while Ty Humber added 18 more.
“They are a tough team to beat,” said Bays’ head coach Diego Maffia, the former U SPORTS national player of the year, of the Owls. “ They have pretty much the same team from last year, so they know their system and they were organized, but we just weren’t ready today from the get-go. They set the tone of the first five minutes and the rest of the game was just playing catch up at that point. You’re just figuring out ways to get the ball inside and to exploit some matchups. But it was too little, too late and our effort wasn’t there today.”
However the Bays weren’t the only B.C. Top 10 Quad-A teams to lose in round 1 of the Super 16.
No. 2 Dover Bay, No. 4 Centennial and No. 7 St. Georges were also all losers, meaning that the potential exists for more incredible competition on the consolation side of the draw.
“That’s that’s the good thing about this tournament… there’s a lot of good powerhouses, and we’re going to get a good game regardless. And there’s a lot of things we got to work on. There’s not an easy game right now for us at all. So whatever team comes up is next-game mentality and we just got to figure out ways to win.”
QUADRANT B
G.W. GRAHAM 82 ST. GEORGE 76
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — They aren’t your average bears.
In fact with winter on the horizon, Chilliwack’s G.W. Graham Grizzlies are just now coming out of hibernation.
Last week, the Grizzlies took a pounding at the hands of the Vancouver College Fighting Irish at the Kodiak Classic in Port Moody.
Yet with the ink barely dry on a new set of B.C. Quad-A rankings Wednesday, one which had dropped the Grizz from the provincial Top 15 altogether, the Jake Mourtizen-coached squad opened here at the TBI with a grinding, nail-biting 82-76 win over the current No. 7 St. George Saints of Vancouver.
“And we’re quite happy to drop out,” Mourtizen said. “We don’t deserve to be in there after last week. But we know we can play with them all. And today we showed that. We’re just happy to be here and represent and make the Howard proud.”
The big addition to the roster from last week?
GWG got its 6-foot-7 senior big man Kale Bartel back in team colours, and his presence proved to be a key leverage point for the rest of the senior-laden squad to pull off the upset win.
Starting five seniors with plenty more coming off the bench, the Grizzlies were led by guard Beckett Goertzen, who scored 20 of his game-high 23 points in the first half.
Bartel added 14, including a clutch 6-for-6 outing from the stripe in the fourth quarter.
Jeremy Yilmaz and Nick Baker had 13 while Cenny Solla had 11.
A younger Saints team was led by the 19 points of Willem Urban. Inno DeCottis scored 17 points and Ian Tyler added a dozen more.
“Our goal right now is every day to get better, and I think we’re doing that,” said Mouritzen. “Our schedule, we’re playing every top team, and that’s the goal… to battle every single night.”
TERRY FOX 81 FLEETWOOD PARK 69
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — Last March, right here at the Langley Events Centre, Marvin Reyes lifted PoCo’s Terry Fox Ravens into the B.C. Quad-A Final Four.
Although the team’s run to the provincial title game fell one win shy at the hands of Nanaimo’s Dover Bay Dolphins, the Ravens were rightly looked upon as one of the teams to beat heading into the 2025-26 season.
Yet as the oldtimers will tell you, there is a distinctly fluid nature to the status of rosters from one season to the next these days that has nothing to do with senior graduation.
Over the off season, Terry Fox lost the services of its talented rising Grade 11 guard Jayson Ikani to the prep school ranks, and thus in these early days of the 2025-26 season, it’s no surprise that the Ravens are still in the process of defining a new identity.
Ask Reyes about all of that and the standout point guard isn’t using anything as a crutch.
“I think it’s just, it’s a better opportunity for (others) to step up into a bigger role on our team,” said Reyes, who scored a team-high 23 points in a TBI Super 16 opening round win over Surrey’s Fleetwood Park Dragons. “So I think they should be more hungry to want to play for their spots.”
The Ravens were never able to run and away and hide from a Dragons team led by the game-high 25 points of Yeseong Cho.
Fleetwood Park, in fact, pulled to within 68-62 down the stretch drive of the fourth quarter.
Reyes, who last season dropped 41 points in the provincial quarterfinals en route to ending the title aspirations of the Vancouver College Fighting Irish, was key in Wednesday’s game-closing 7-1 run, especially with a steal and a feed for a layin by Ravens’ big man Maksym Cicheki.
The Ravens had come into play at 0-2 after suffering definitive losses to both Vancouver College and Oak Bay, and so the team’s first goal was simply to pick up its first win of the season.
“Tonight, it was just (about) a bounce back, and to play with more energy, more effort, and actually want to win,” Reyes said. “I think we could definitely play better. Practises have been a little bit slacking, but I think now we’re stepping up our game and we’re able to play now.”
Sounds like all the ingredients are in place for tomorrow’s 6:15 p.m. quarterfinal against Chilliwack’s upset-minded, unranked G.W. Graham Grizzlies.
Deklan Martin with 13 points and Caleb Barnes with 12 more also broke double figures on offence for the winners. Rivin Jayasinghe had 12 for Fleetwood Park, and Coles James added 11 more.
BOTTOM HALF DRAW
QUADRANT C
MEI 94 DOVER BAY 67
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — Truth serum isn’t readily available for post-game interviews at high school basketball tournaments, so I guess MEI Eagles’ head coach Mike Lee gets the benefit of the doubt when he says his team has never practiced a zone defence this season.
OK, that’s just a light-hearted jab at Lee and the No. 2-ranked Triple-A Eagles, because the way they deployed a basic 2-3 zone against the No. 2 Quad-A Dover Bay Dolphins, and used it to come away 94-67 winners here in the opening round of TBI Super 16 was downright stunning.
With both the 6-foot-5 Mercer Thiessen and the 6-foot-8 Kaden Vandervelden two of the back-end anchors (as well as offensive juggernauts), MEI effectively made the Dolphins’ ultra-talented Grade 11 point guard Joe Linder carry a massive offensive load.
Linder still delivered a game-high 33-point performance, but down the stretch drive of the fourth quarter there was simply no give to MEI zone.
It performed like castle moat complete with magic dragons and fantastic archers.
Crazy.
The Eagles were not only playing their first game of the season, they had just this week begun to meld the fair number of their volleyball athletes and other fall sports student-athletes into the team.
As well, with construction at the school hampering gym availability, just finding consistent practice time was a challenge.
“So, I walked into the locker room before the game tonight and said ‘Guys, we’ve been working with the seven or eight guys I’ve had at practice the whole preseason, only on man-to-man (defence).’ That’s the first time we played zone. We didn’t even play a lot of zone last year. We have some size. We have some talent. We got two U SPORTS players on our team — Vandervelden and Thiessen — and they can really anchor, like, they can really control the boards. And, you know, I watched a bunch of the Kodiak Klassic last week, and I noticed that not a single team played zone against Joe (Linder). He was getting so much slot penetration. I thought, well, let’s just give it a try. I mean, we can come out of it real quick because we’ve been working on our man stuff forever.”
Of course, only a fool would have done such a thing based on its effectiveness.
“They couldn’t really figure it out,” said Lee of the Dolphins. “But it’s so early and they’re such a good team. They’re such a good team.”
The defence wound up wearing down an already-fatigued Dover Bay team which last week beat Semiahmoo and Vancouver College en route to a loss to St. Patricks in the Kodiak Klassic title game.
The Dolphins trailed 78-65 late but wound up surrendering a game-ending 16-2 run to the Eagles.
“Just to be honest with the guys, they worked really hard last weekend and we only had a short turnaround and probably shouldn’t have went as hard as we did in practice this week,” admitted Dover Bay head coach Darren Seaman after the loss. “They looked really tired, you know? So some of this is on me as a coach.
“And, we haven’t honestly put a lot of time into practising against zone because we’re playing more man-to-man ourselves this year. So we haven’t really got those reps.”
Thiessen led the winner with 26 points, while Vandervelden and Gabe Headley each scored 16 points. Jaj McIsaac had 11.
Dane Schmidt added 10 points for Dover Bay.
MEI and Vancouver College will clash in a 4:30 p.m. quarterfinal on Thursday.
VANCOUVER COLLEGE 104 vs. LORD TWEEDSMUIR 74
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — The tougher, the better.
That’s the credo of the Vancouver College Fighting Irish two weeks into the new B.C. high school basketball season.
On Wednesday, the Quad-A No. 5 Irish opened up in the Super 16 draw at TBI with a resounding 104-74 win over Surrey’s unranked Lord Tweedsmuir Panthers, the result one of a number of decisive victories against teams at or near the top 15 in the province.
For head coach Ryan Shams, the idea is to face the best he can early and find out where the potential weaknesses might be.
In its four games against provincially-ranked or honourable mention teams, the Irish are 3-1 with their only loss coming to new No. 2-ranked Dover Bay of Nanaimo in the semifinals of last week’s Kodiak Klassic in Port Moody.
Vancouver College lost that game 95-92 in overtime. They have also beaten No. 10 Holy Cross 68-65, last week’s No. 5 Terry Fox 76-51 and last week’s honourable mention G.W. Graham 90-47.
“My thing is, you want to test the guys early, really see who we are, and that’s the best way to learn. Like even that loss in overtime to Dover Bay the other night, I think we almost learned more from that loss than had we won it. So now, when we come to January and February, we have a really good sense of who we actually are because we’re playing ranked teams every night and we can see the holes…we can see the things that we need to work on.”
On Wednesday, not a lot looked like it needed work against an under-the-radar, senior-laden team of Panthers who themselves boast several enviable offensive talents.
Five Irish players broke double figures on offence, led by the 22 points of Lucas Tan-Ngo, the 19 of John Anthony and 17 of bruising but agile forward Ashton Wong. Winson Del Rosario scored 13 and Christian Tan 10. All five are seniors.
And like a few other marquee programs around the province this season, it’s more exemplary depth in the senior class than it is one or two go-to stars.
It’s something Shams and the players have grabbed a hold of early and could well be the thing they lean on as 2025 gives way to 2026.
“The thing that I think about our team is we don’t have one guy,” begins Shams. “I think we have like 10 really good players. And when we play as a team and move the basketball and play unselfish, that’s when we’re winning these games by 30, 40 points. As well, when we’re engaged on the defensive end, that kind of gets our offence going. We want to turn defence into offence. So when we’re getting those stops and we’re engaged, we can get out and run and play our brand of basketball.”
Lord Tweedsmuir got voluminous offerings from a pair of seniors.
Forwards Aaron Rai and Aryan Syal scored a game-high 26 and 24 points respectively while Myles Anderson added 12 points.
The Irish advance to Thursday’s 4:30 p.m. quarterfinal where it will face the winner of a later game today between Dover Bay and MEI.
QUADRANT D
ARGYLE 88 CENTENNIAL 60
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — Going back to his high school playing days at North Vancouver’s Windsor Secondary, Jamie Oei has always been aware of those early-morning tournament games.
You know, the ones where you’ve either got it off the opening tip, or you don’t.
On Wednesday, as the TBI’s 8:30 a.m. opener got under way, it was clear that the team Oei coaches these days were much more the former than the latter.
“It helps that we’ve had some commitment from the boys to shoot in the mornings a few days a week, so they’re kind of used to getting up early,” Oei said as he guided North Vancouver’s Argyle Pipers to an 88-60 win over Coquitlam’s Centennial Centaurs. “We had a practice last night, but we kind of kept it short so that we could have enough energy to play what I call the Egg McMuffin game.”
The Pipers started as if shot out of a cannon, building an 18-2 lead.
Logan Szpak, who went on to score a game-high 23 points, drained his second of three opening-frame triples to make it 21-5 Pipers with 3:30 left.
Argyle led by as many as 20 points (27-7) in the first quarter, then hunkered down and got ready to slow Centennial’s 6-foot-7 big man inside, Alex Birsan.
The Centaurs got 13 points in the second quarter from Birsan and had pulled to within 45-34 at intermission.
Yet the key for Argyle was their response the rest of the way.
“I thought we were able to kind of weather the storm,” said Oei. “They had a great second quarter, kind of got them back in the game, got them fired up, but we started the third quarter defensively really well, and that really helped us who win the game.”
Nathan Szpak scored 20 points in the win while Ilia Maydan added 18 more
ST. PATRICK 104 YALE 79
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — We’re only in the second week of the B.C. senior boys basketball season, but in that short span of time, Vancouver’s St. Patricks Celtics have been so good that they are setting a higher bar for themselves each and every time out of the gate.
Coming off a 103-95 win over Nanaimo’s Dover Bay Dolphins last Saturday in the championship final of the Kodiak Classic in Port Moody, the Celts once again looked near-perfect for huge stretches in opening the TBI Super 16 with a 104-79 win over Abbotsford’s Yale Lions.
But what of the fact that the feisty and talented Lions actually led 11-9 early, despite the fact that its unstoppable interior presence Taige Roberts hadn’t even begun to break a sweat.
“It was a slow beginning, but they were still waking up,” St. Pats’ head coach Nap Santos said afterwards of his charges.
Once they smelled the coffee, however, they were every bit as imposing as advertised.
The Triple-A No. 1 powers rained down 20 three-pointers and balanced it with sound, physical and opportunistic defence to build an 84-55 lead after three quarters.
Jaiden Quan and Riley Santa Juana were the lynchpins within the downtown barrage, Quan scoring a team-high 31 points and Santa Juana 27 more. Between Quan’s nine triples and Santa Juana’s seven, the duo tallied 16 of those aforementioned long-line connections.
But name a St. Pat’s team from the past number of seasons that didn’t shoot the three with dagger-like consistency?
And as that is once again the case, what does Santos think is the 2025-26 team’s defining characteristic?
“The great thing about these guys is they’re all willing passers,” said Santos. “They’re happy for the other guy, and that’s a big difference from our previous teams. It’s not that (past teams) didn’t. But I’m just saying that these guys are at a different level, and if that person gets some success, then they’re happy for them. And if you’re a willing passer, then it just makes my life easier too.”
It also adds to the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ factor.
An extended hand on defence leads to a finger-tip deflection, which leads to a fast-break turnover, a breathtaking cycle of passing and, if the shot is there, a rip-meshing highlight from three.
Jemuel Castro added 13 for the winners and Dhyne Cotin another 12.
Yale’s Roberts had but two points in the first quarter, but went on to finish with a game-high 36 points in the loss.
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