LANGLEY — Welcome to Day 1 of the 2025 boys Tsumura Basketball Invitational and our eight Super 16 bracket games.
Please check back on this posting throughout the day as we do our best to keep loyal readers of Varsity Letters up to date on the latest results, and note that today’s earliest games, part of Quad D, are listed at the very bottom of this filing.
(First filing begins with 8:30 a.m. game between Centennial and Argyle at bottom of this story in Quad D! so scroll down)
BOYS
SUPER 16
DAY 1
(Centre Court)
TOP HALF DRAW
QUADRANT A
4:30 p.m. — TAMANAWIS vs. WEST VANCOUVER
7:45 p.m. — OAK BAY vs. KELOWNA
QUADRANT B
G.W. GRAHAM 82 ST. GEORGE 76
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.”
1:15 p.m. — TERRY FOX vs. FLEETWOOD PARK
BOTTOM HALF DRAW
QUADRANT C
6:15 p.m. — DOVER BAY vs. MEI
3 p.m. — VANCOUVER COLLEGE vs. LORD TWEEDSMUIR
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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