Guy MacPherson and your author after a great day of strumming this past November. (Photo courtesy MacPherson family 2024. All Rights Reserved)
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Guy MacPherson (1962-2024) To my basketball-writing brother: I’ll miss you at the B.C.’s this week… but I know you will be watching!

VANCOUVER — “Hey Howard, I’ve got someone you have to meet” my friend, the former Victoria Times-Colonist basketball writer Jeff Rud said, finding me in my customary position, slumped over my laptop while transcribing an interview during one of the frequent media gatherings called by the Vancouver Grizzlies in the run-up to their first season […]

In his final high school game, Oak Bay's Diego Maffia scored a game-high 22 points and earned MVP honours as the Quad A team beat the Triple A team 107-100 in the featured B.C. boys high school all-star game at Semiahmoo Secondary in Surrey. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
North Delta's Suraj Gahir (left) and Oak Bay's Diego Maffia comprise their own mutual admiration society. (Photos by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
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Suraj and Diego: North Delta’s Gahir and Oak Bay’s Maffia are both a blue-chip all-star pair and a mutual admiration society

NORTH DELTA — They have played against each only one time, and yet as each counts down to Saturday, the final day of their respective high school basketball careers, maybe it’s no surprise that they have already formed a mutual admiration society.Off the court, Oak Bay’s Diego Maffia and North Delta’s Suraj Gahir showed themselves to […]

Oak Bay's Diego Maffia (6) pulls on Bays' colours for the final time Saturday in the 43rd annual B.C. boys high school all-star game. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
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Diego Maffia: Ahead of his Saturday all-star finale, Oak Bay’s superstar guard chats about finding a fit with his hometown Victoria Vikes

He may not be joining the most prolific offence in U Sports’ basketball, yet high-scoring Diego Maffia likes the schematics of his hometown Victoria Vikes and the ways in which his greatest skills can potentially find their fit at the university level.

Sparwood's Tanner Barclay scored 83 points in a game this season, the second-highest single-game total in B.C. high school history. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
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The Diego of the Kootenays is at the BC’s! On same day Maffia scored 94, Sparwood’s Barclay scored 83! Watch him this week at the LEC!

LANGLEY — If you’re a high school basketball historian, you may remember this past February 9th as the day Oak Bay Bays’ senior guard Diego Maffia set a new B.C. single-game record by scoring 94 points in a 114-88 win over Edmonton’s Ross Sheppard Thunderbirds at Kelowna’s Western Canada Invitational.Yet that very same day, in […]

Oak Bay's star guard Diego Maffia (right) produced one of the most historic moments in B.C. high school sports on Saturday in Kelowna. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
The story of the night: Holy Cross guard Michael Risi stares head-on at the offensive wizardry of Oak Bay guard Diego Maffia in the 20th Legal Beagle championship final staged Saturday night at Port Coquitlam's Terry Fox Secondary School gym. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
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A SUNDAY READ from Legal Beagle ’19: Why Holy Cross’ Michael Risi & Oak Bay’s Diego Maffia make BC high school basketball so special

PORT COQUITLAM — Michael Risi was handed the defensive assignment of his life Saturday evening, and when you consider it came at a basketball tournament known simply as ‘The Beagle’, it seemed fitting that all he needed in order to proceed was a figurative whiff of Diego Maffia’s sneakers.

More Maffia magic? That's just what Oak Bay senior guard Diego Maffia delivered Friday night in PoCo when he hit a buzzer-beating trey to send his Bays to Saturday's Legal Beagle final against Holy Cross. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
Reflecting on some of the special moments that will accompany the start of TBI 2018. (LEC graphic)
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Tsumura Basketball Invitational 2018: The top four things I’ll ponder and be thankful for on strolls around the LEC

LANGLEY — Here’s four things I will enjoy watching as I stroll, broadcast, and photograph the action over the next three days, beginning Thursday, at the 2018 Tsumura Basketball Invitational (full draw below).

(Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca)
Doing a double take? Yes, that is Oak Bay's resident basketball star Diego Maffia, this year the starting setter for the Barbers' Top 10 AAA volleyball team, and the leading scorer on the Bays varsity soccer team. Remind you of another Victoria wunderkind of the past? (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca)
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A Sunday read: Oak Bay’s star multi-sport student-athlete Diego Maffia shares a high school resume strikingly similar to you know who!

VICTORIA — He’s the reigning Vancouver Island AAA MVP in one sport. In another, at it’s 2017 B.C. AAA championship tournament, he was the event’s second-leading scorer. And finally, in the sport of basketball, the one he calls his speciality, he is easily among a handful of the best long-range shooters our province has seen in the […]