LANGLEY — Sometimes, you can’t help but think Darko Kulic is a genius.
Quirky, unconventional and unapologetic are three other ways to describe the persona of the King George Dragons head coach, a guy who loves his players and truly uses the game of hoops to teach them about life.
It’s all true.
He won’t deny it.
But about all I could think about after chatting with Kulic in the moments following his No. 4-ranked Double-A team’s impressive 62-58 win over the tier’s No. 1-ranked defending B.C. champion Collingwood Cavaliers of West Vancouver in the Tsumura Basketball Invitational’s Select 16 final was that word.
Genius.
In a game which featured the high-flying 8-0 Cavaliers, a team which has been regularly reaching 100-plus points against a 6-1 Dragons team which, on most nights, needs somewhere around 50-55 points to win.
The slow-down game, when it’s built on the backs of a tradition-laden loyalty to the 2-3 zone defence, can work against most of the competition.
But at the Double-A tier, Collingwood has been setting the gold standard with an offence that you wouldn’t think could be very easily slowed.
That is, until the Dragons somehow found away.
That on its own doesn’t make you a genius.
But, to a seasoned hoops scribe who is always searching for quotes which transcend the cliche and the mundane, it was Kulic’s response to the defence he schemed and where he found his inspiration.
“All these years, we have talked about pace… controlling the pace,” Kulic began, acknowledging the fact that in more seasons than not, the King George tempo ranges anywhere from what the late Leonard Bernstein would have classified as adagio (slow) to andante (walking pace).
“Collingwood is one of the best-coached teams in B.C. Their shooting is really scary. So we really wanted to make it methodical, slow, steady.”
But instead of looking for inspiration from some of the best slow-down teams in NBA history, Kulic gets a little kooky. He uses football teams as his guide.
“I copied the 2013 Pete Carroll (coached) Seahawks,” he said after his squad had miraculously held Collingwood to to just 56 points after the Cavs had scored 90, 98, 100, 100, 101, 107, 92 and 101 points as part of their 8-0 start.
“They were about throwing less and keeping it on the ground,” he said of that season’s eventual Super Bowl winners. “So I compared their passing to three-point shooting, and I compared their run game to our play in the post.
“So, we were saying ‘Keep it on the ground’ and ‘Time of possession’. I told the boys that we weren’t going to win a lot of games that are maybe cute. But we go out there and it’s about winning, and how you win is by working as hard as you can.”
Like we said, genius… at it’s most basic and simple.
All of which is not to say that the Dragons play like they’re wearing cleats, shoulder pads and helmets.
But that is the mindset that players like Select 16 tournament MVP forward Faisal Shawwa and Player of the Game selectee Kio Nickel brought to the Langley Events Centre floor.
“We knew that we couldn’t fight fire with fire,” admitted Shawwa who was a four-game Rock of Gibraltar for the Dragons, scoring 16 points for the winners on Saturday. “We can’t win that type of game. We wanted to slow it down and make them play some D. That’s how we got the win.”
That, and in a low-scoring game in which any make from the field was huge, a game-high 22 points from Nickel who hit three triples, including a huge one to beat the shot-clock and give King George a 53-40 lead with 8:40 remaining.
Of course Collingwood finally began to resemble themselves in the fourth quarter. King George, however, seemed to have just enough breathing room to hold back the onslaught which came just a shade too late — in the game’s 11th hour — for head coach Andy Wong’s team to make its furious rally complete.
“Their 2-3 zone is something that is really hard to attack,” said Wong of the Dragons. “It’s seemed to have our number for the past number of years. We had some good counters that we thought we could go to, but we didn’t shoot well in the first half (3-of-17 from 3-pt), so we were trying to figure out what we could do to get to the rim.”
The Cavs’ shot selection seemed forced and just like every good ground game based on ball control and its ability to eat clock, especially on those snowy days when the wind is blowing in hard off Lake Erie, the Dragons… oh wait… wrong sport.
“They were able to get us out of our rhythm and that is a compliment to everything that Darko does,” continued Wong. “He just disrupts us and makes us put up shots we wouldn’t normally want to put up, and they won that battle. I think we had the idea of being able to press a little too late. I wished we’d have had a couple of extra minutes because the momentum was starting to sway our way.”
Collingwood’s talented pair of Sam Li and Tony Li, not related, again carried the offensive load. Sam hit four triples and finished with 20 points while Tony added 13 more.
Afterwards, a happy Kulic nonetheless acknowledged that provincial championships are not won in early December.
“I know that last year we also beat Collingwood in the (regular) season and we know who won the ring, right?” he said point at the Collingwood bench.
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