Welcome to Day 2 of the TBI boys Super 16.
It’s Elite 8 Thursday.
We’ve already had an all-timer with STM’s incredible rally past St. Georges. Keep checking back for updates from our final three games throughout the evening.
(All stories by Howard Tsumura)
ST. THOMAS MORE 82 ST. GEORGES 80
LANGLEY — At one point in the second half, as St. Thomas More’s Zeru Aberra picked himself up off the basketball court for the umpteenth time, his head coach asked him a simple question.
“Hey Zeru, you alright,” Denzel Laguerta asked his crash-and-bang senior guard.
“He told me ‘I’m fine,’” Laguerta would later say, after initially wondering if he needed to pull his team leader off the court for at least a brief respite after the pounding he was taking inside the paint against the St. George’s Saints in the quarterfinal round here at the TBI Super 16 tournament.
“Then he told me that if we wanted to, we’d have to carry him off the court.”
That was right around the time the No. 3 Triple-A Knights of Burnaby were trailing the No. 5 Quad-A Saints of Vancouver by a whopping 20-point (76-56) deficit.
At that point St. Thomas More had literally no momentum.
Every positive step they took was met by the same and more by its talented opposition.
Yet somehow, with Abera leading the way, STM mounted perhaps the most incredible comeback in TBI history, finishing the game on a 26-4 run to claim a stunning 82-80 victory and berth in Friday’s Final Four semifinals.
“I knew we could compete with these guys and coming out of the half (trailing 47-31), if we could clean it up…” said Abera, who would go on to score 19 of his game-high 41 points in the fourth quarter.
“And then we had the game in our hands, and with all of the energy and momentum, we just took it over from them.”
Truthfully, it was hard to fathom how quickly… and quietly the rally seemed to transpire.
But with each stop on the defensive end, the tide just continued to turn.
At one stage, Abera’s personal point-scoring streak included three straight triples. And he also finished the fourth quarter shooting 6-of-7 from the free throw line.
With a minute remaining, the Knights’ Shane Deza stole the ball at half court and deftly found a speeding Abera on his way to the basket.
Abera hit both shots from the stripe to give STM an 80-79 lead with 56.3 seconds remaining.
After Saints missed a three, Abera drew a foul and hit one of two for an 81-79 lead with 43.5 seconds left.
St. George’s star guard Dorian Glogovac, who finished with a team-high 22 points, hit one of two free throws himself to make it 81-80 with 34.8 seconds left.
Then, STM’s Grade 11 forward Logan Ball was fouled and he hit one of two shots to ultimately seal the victory at 82-80 with 7.6 seconds remaining.
“I have awarded Zeru some leadership awards at STM, not for the points he scores, or the assists or rebounds,” Laguerta added. “It’s the way he leads himself. In every conditioning drill, he’s always up front. And if you tell him to jog it out, he’s going to sprint.”
The win sends the Knights into the Final Four on Friday against the winner of the Vancouver College vs. Terry Fox game at 7:45 p.m.
Deza added 12 points for the winners while Ball had 15.
Jaevar KhunKhun had 17 for the Saints, Aryan Sablok 16 and Roman Simmons 15.
“The culture we have here in terms of what me and coach Mitch (recent program architect and former longtime head coach Aaron Mitchell) are trying to build… he’s always taught me that early in the season it’s about the process.. not worried about wins and losses but more the resiliency and the culture we’re trying to build,” said Laguerta.
Unspoken in all of this? Culture and resiliency are what ultimately make wins like Thursday’s possible.
Abera couldn’t help but think it was a win which would serve as the reminder to he and his teammates the rest of the season that anything is possible.
“That was one of the higher ranked Quad-A teams and if we can face this type of adversity,” said Abera, “I don’t think there is any other kind of adversity that we face that we won’t be able to get over.”
VANCOUVER COLLEGE 67 TERRY FOX 59
LANGLEY — In the real-life lab of basketball education, 34-year-old Vancouver College head ocach Ryan Shams greatest strength might be the fact that he respects all the greats who have come before him.
On Thursday, as TBI 2024’s Super 16 round reached its Elite 8 quarterfinals here at the Langley Events Centre, Shams and his Quad-A No. 4 Fighting Irish were gridning through the battle of their lives heading into the fourth quarter against the young, restless and unranked Terry Fox Ravens of Port Coquitlam.
Important to note that this is the same team that Vancouver College dismantled in its season-opener by a 108-63 score back on Nov. 26.
On Thursday, 63 points was almost enough to win the game, the Irish digging extra deep to find fourth-quarter stretch-drive success en route to a hard-earned 67-59 win.
“Today was a tough one,” Shams said. “I think we got a little away from our team concepts, and we were forcing the one-on-one stuff. At the half we talked about playing as team, moving (the ball) and getting everyone involved and that helped a little. But respect to Fox, we beat them in our home opener and so you knew Chambers would have his team ready to go.”
Chambers, of course, is the legendary Rich Chambers who has led B.C. high school boys teams for parts of the past six decades.
And if you are looking for an explanation as to how a team that lost by 45 just 10 days ago can come back and lose by six in a contest where a few key plays could have reversed the outcome?
“I warned them in the pregame not to take these guys for granted, that they won the junior proivincials last year,” reminded Shams. “So I knew we would be in for a dog fight.”
And back to learning in the lab of real-life, real-time head-to-head coaching against the province’s deepest-rooted coaching Yodas?
“One of the best ways to learn is to go up against the best so whether its Chambers, or (Oak Bays’ Chris) Franklin or (West Vancouver’s Paul) Eberhardt, that is the only way to get better as a coach… go up against guys that have been doing it forever.
“And I love it. I know I will be in for a battle every time no matter what the rankings are because coaching is such a big part of basketball. It’s just awesome to compete against the best coaches in the province.”
Andres Garcia scored 21 of his game-high 29 points in the second half, and was the only Irish player to hit double figures in scoring.
For the Ravens, point guard Marvin Reyes and forward Jayson Ikani each Grade 10s, each scored 20 points.
The Irish now move on to face the St. Thomas More Knights in the Final Four on Friday, tipping off at 7:45 p.m.
ST. PATRICKS 86 CENTENNIAL 55
LANGLEY — Its current run of top-level success has lasted long enough that any talk of their collective lack of height has become nothing more than a tired cliche.
But if you’ve watched the current era of hoops being practiced by East Vancouver’s St. Patricks Celtics over the past five or seasons or so, there’s actually a key talking point with head coach Nap Santos’ program that never gets talked about.
And so in the aftermath of the Triple-A No. 2-ranked Celtics’ decisive win over Coquitlam’s Quad-A honourable mention Centennial Centaurs in the quarterfinals here at the TBI 2024 Super 16, it was a simple question directed at Santos about what his team’s primary mindset is heading into games.
“The mindset is just being really tough,” he smiled of his team “They are really nice kids so I don’t want that niceness to go out on the court because we’re trying to compete, and that is nothing against the other team. It’s all just being tough, especially on defence and doing whatever it takes to get that W.”
It’s the same recipe that the Celtics will carry into Friday’s 6:15 p.m. semifinal clash against the Dover Bay-Burnaby South winner.
And it’s also the same conversation Santos had a year ago this weekend when his team advanced all the way to the TBI Super 16 championship final before being handed a figurative jaw-breaking 91-32 shot to the chops by California’s St. Margarita Eagles.
On that day, the first thing Santos wanted to talk about was what he called ‘The Bump’.
“It’s about actually feeling it,” Santos said that day about the fact that not an inch of the court was given for free by the TBI’s U.S. visitors. “The bump. Getting bumped and getting hit. I think our guys needed that, and I loved it.”
“I played in The Philippines and that is what it is like over there. “You have to try and find a way to get from point A to point B and they are not going to let you get to B. You have to find the way.”
Thursday’s quarterfinal did not play out against that level of physicality.
Yet it’s a lie to say that the thumping his team took that day at the hands of Santa Margarita has not resonated deeply.
“It’s an attitude.. that you don’t just give ‘em the position. Let ‘em work for it. That is like The Bump. Don’t make it easy for the other team,” Santos continued.
Despite the fact that the long-limbed Centaurs were able to put great talent on the floor in 6-foot-7 star Alex Birsan and rising 6-foot-6 Marcus Perry, the Celtics were able to dictate tempo and tenor on its own terms.
“It’s always been heart over height at St. Pat’s,” Santos continued. “We’re not afraid of the bigs, we’re not posting up anyone, but teams will post us up, so learn how to defend it. If you have that edge, that attitude, just be tough so that we can compete with those bigger teams.”
And then there the other half of that coin, the fact that the Celtics, along with Vancouver College, might have the best core of three-point shooters in the province.
On Thursday, it was St. Pat’s tallest player, 6-foot-4 Jakobi Matalabos, who took his shooting stroke to a different place.
Matalabos finished with a game-high 33 points, hitting eight triples in the process.
Riley Santa Juana added 20 points, Heracles Mai 10 more, and Arkin Solis another nine with a trio of triples.
Birsan led the Centaurs with 13 points on a night when the St. Patricks defence gave up very little inside.
On the game, Centennial hit eight three-pointers but just 13 field goals inside the arc.
DOVER BAY 82 BURNAY SOUTH 72
LANGLEY — The Dover Bay Dolphins are proving that they are improving on the court with all of the reps they are getting in practice and in games as the No. 2-ranked team in the B.C. Quad-A rankings.
The Dolphins are also proving that they are adept at keeping their focus while playing the role of road warriors for the second straight week.
After dispatching the competition with four wins in three days to claim the Kodiak Classic championship title at Heritage Woods Secondary last Saturday, the Nanaimo squad is, of course, back on the mainland for the 2024 TBI Super 16.
Thursday, Forward Hudson Trood led five Dophins in double figures with a game-high 22 points, 20 of which came between the second and third quarters, as the tourney’s No. 1-seed topped an improving Burnaby South Rebels squad 88-72.
The victory propels the Dolphins into a 6:15 p.m. semifinal on Friday against East Vancouver’s St. Patricks Celtics.
The 7:45 p.m. semifinal pits the Quad-A No. 4 Vancouver College Fighting Irish against the Triple-A No. 3 St. Thomas More Knights of Burnaby.
Dover Bay, which has blended athleticism, smarts and size to great effect over the past few seasons, hit 10 triples on Thursday, including three from 6-foot-4 Dane Schmidt who came off the bench to score 10 points.
Senior forward and team scoring leader Frank Linder added 20 points, point guard Joe Linder 13 more, while senior guard Evan Slater also knocked down a trio of triple to finish with 12 points.
Guards Llorikk Gutierrez and Sean Lay led Burnaby South with 20 and 19 points respectively, Lay hitting five threes on the game.
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