LANGLEY — We’ve gone final!
After eight championship round games in the Super 16 round, here’s a game report and photos from each. Many thanks to photographer Wilson Wong for his contributions to the post!
Before we get there, here’s all of tomorrow’s quarterfinal matchups:
SUPER 16 QUARTERFINALS
(All games at South Court)
3 p.m. — St. George’s vs. St. Thomas More
4:30 p.m. — Vancouver College vs. Terry Fox
6:15 p.m. — Centennial vs. St. Patricks
7:45 p.m. — Dover Bay vs. Burnaby South
Howard Tsumura
ALL STORIES by HOWARD TSUMURA
ST GEORGES 89 HERITAGE WOODS 71
LANGLEY — Four days after pushing the No. 1-ranked Quad-A team in B.C. to the deep stages of the fourth quarter, Vancouver’s No. 8-ranked St. George’s Saints answered the early morning wake-up call and continued its roll here at the Tsumura Basketball Invitational.
Just days after its 78-73 setback to the defending B.C. champion Spectrum Thunder of Victoria in the final of the Cowichan Secondary Inviational in Duncan, the Saints got all they could handle early from Port Moody’s Heritage Woods Kodiaks before winning 89-71.
“I love how we settled down halfway through the second quarter, found our place, opened up the game and turned it into more of a track meet,” said St. George’s head coach Guy daSilva. “But it took a while.”
The Saints were led by the 21 points of senior guard Dorian Glogovac, the 6-foot-9 scoring wiz.
“I think he is amazing, one of the best players I have had in my program and I have been blessed to coach a lot of great players,” said daSilva. “He can do so much with the ball, he’s got competitive fire and a sense of the moment that you don’t see in a lot of high school kids.”
Grade 11 swingman Roman Simmons added 17 points, while the team’s two starting Grade 10s, Willem Urban and Ian Tyler, each poured home a dozen.
“They got starting sports through injury at the start of year, but the five best players play so no one has taken that away from them,” the coach added. And you could see why. They are great defenders and greast connective pieces. They fit really nice in our system.”
Vuk Lekovic led the Kodiaks with 13 points, while Afu Bullock, Kai Yoon and Caleb Park all scored 11 each.
Saints face the winner of MEI vs. STM in a 3 p.m. quarterfinal on Thursday.
ST. THOMAS MORE 91 MEI 68
LANGLEY — It didn’t take long for St. Thomas More head coach Denzel Laguerta to mention the ‘C’ word when asked about what he loves most in his preseason Triple-A No. 3 Knights.
“Culture is everything,” Laguerta said after his team’s decisive 91-68 win over the preseason No. 1 MEI Eagles of Abbotsford.
The early days of December are the days of chemistry and, yes, it’s constant companion… culture.
And for STM, the two have had a good, long spell to dovetail, especially when you consider that this season’s Grade 12 contingent formed the nucleus of the team which won the 2023 B.C. junior varsity championship title right here at the Langley Events Centre.
“It’s the exact same team from that year, so we’re Grade 12 heavy and a couple of 11’s learning the ropes,” said Laguerta. “But the core is right there and the culture has pleasantly surprised me in terms of how much it has translated from lasty year. So the core of what we’re doing is technical stuff as opposed to laying the foundation. That is big because culture is everything.”
The guard trio of Zeru Abera (25 points), Shane Deza (17 points) and Jacob Oreta (17) combined to score 59 points. With senior guard Joey Nguyen and Grade 11 forward Logan Ball adding 10 apiece.
The 6-foot-5 Ball, new to senior varsity, and the 6-foot-4 senior forward Zeeshan Solanki are bringing a different dimension to the guard-heavy squad this season.
“It’s a different look for us, we’re so perimetre-oriented between Jacob, Shane and Zeru,” said Oreta. “It’s nice to have an inside presence and that is something we try to establish early with Logan and him and Zeeshan Solanki as well.”
The Eagles got a superb 30-point outing from its 6-foot-5 Grade 11 guard Mercer Thiessen as they work to find their own chemistry, coming into the campaign without the services of its inured 6-foot-9 senior star forward Spencer Tatlock who a season ago played a huge role in helping the Eagles to the B.C. Triple-A championship final where it fell to Nanaimo’s Dover Bay Dolphins.
Shane Madahar added 16 for the Eagles while Zeke Lee added 15.
The Knights advance to Thursday’s quarterfinals and a 3 p.m. clash with the Quad-A No. 8-ranked St. George’s Saints of Vancouver.
ST. PATRICKS 78 SULLIVAN HEIGHTS 52
LANGLEY — Vancouver’s St. Patricks Celtics are annually in every conversation about title contenders in the world of B.C. senior boys basketball.
Yet ask Celtics’ head coach Napoleon Santos about all of that and he’ll tell you nothing worth having has ever been delivered overnight.
And no one can relate to those sentiments more than Sullivan Heights Stars head coach Tyler Ram.
Surrey’s Stars took it on the chin for a fifth straight game as part of its 78-52 loss Wednesday in the opening round of Super 16 here at TBI 2024.
It should be noted that a Sullivan Heights team which qualified for the senior Quad-A B.C.’s for the first time last March were led by their quarterback, the talented senior point guard Nick Baxter.
And Baxter, who is now two surgeries and a couple of months into rehab from the broken finger he suffered while actually quarterbacking the Sullivan Heights football team in October, has been the hoop squad’s leading scorer for the past three seasons.
“Nick is the engine that runs our team,” said Ram who hopes to have his floor general back for league play in the new year. It’s an adjustment period, we’re battling hard against all these good teams and in the end it will make us better. We look at everything as a lesson at what can we do to get better.”
On Thursday, however, the Celtics continued to ride their early season wave of red-hot three-point shooting, breaking open a tight game before the half behind the 26 points of its leader, Grade 11 guard Riley Santa Juana.
St. Pat’s knocked down 13 treys on the game, including four from Santa Juana, and another four from perhaps the most under-rated shooter in the province, compact 5-foot-8 Grade 12 guard Arkin Solis (16 points).
Jaiden Quan and Jakobi Matalabos added 14 points each for the winners.
Navin Sidhu and Ethan Hugall scored 13 and 11 points respectively for the Stars.
“We’ve seen just recently some success and it’s taken years and years of hard work from myself and multiple other coaches,” continued Ram of the Stars program. “We’ve spent decades at this point and we love this. We love where we’re at because we get to see these kinds of battle-tested teams. We get to see great programs. I tell my guys all the time that they know ultimately where they want to so. So we have to take everything as a lesson.”
CENTENNIAL 81 YALE 71
LANGLEY — Have you heard of Alex Birsan before?
If you haven’t, you might want to get used to hearing the name a whole lot more this season.
The Centennial Centaurs’ 6-foot-7 Grade 11 is listed as a forward, but really, if you watched him go to work Wednesday in the opening round of the TBI Super 16, there wasn’t a place on the floor where he looked out of place.
Behind Birsan’s stat-stuffing box score line — 35 points in 36 minutes on 13-of-26 shooting from the field, 9-of-15 free throw shooting, 15 rebounds including eight offensive, three assists and four blocks — Coquitlam’s Centaurs topped 81-71 Abbotsford’s Yale Lions in a matchup of team’s so evenly balanced as to suggest perfect chess board partners.
In fact it took a 16-1 run between the third and fourth quarters for Centennial to build the kind of lead they needed to hold off the Lions and its own star, 6-foot-5 Grade 11 guard Taige Roberts who scored 22 of his team-high 25 points in the first half.
With 5:41 left in the game, Birsan beat a potential goal-tending call with a swat near the glass, then quickly squared up in the paint to reject the shot that came directly off his first rejection.
Later in the fourth quarter, he completed the three-point play from the stripe after hitting a fade-away elbow jumper with two defenders collapsing into him.
Birsan played with more than a little bit of anonymity last season as a Grade 10 starter on a Centaurs team that didn’t qualify for the provincial tournament. It also lost in its TBI’s first-round game to Sir Winston Churchill.
“I was getting a ton of minutes last year, but I feel the maturity level is a lot better this year,” said Birsan, who teammed nicely Wednesday with teammates Taisho Gilmour (16 points) and Ethan Toy (10 points). “I feel I have matured and gotten way better.
“Just experience, playing in games like this where the physicality is a lot and over time you go over what you need to improve and I have worked on my weaknesses.”
Indeed, the evolution of Birsan over the course of an off-season was striking.
It also made the match-up against the Lions the best of the first four Super 16 matchups played opening day with Birsan and Roberts two of the top Grade 11 players in the province.
Centennial trailed 41-37 at halftime, but brought a diligent, physical focus to the floor over the second half.
“It as a dirty win,” said Birsan. “We came tougher after being down at the half. We went over it in the locker room. We win as a family and we lose as a family and in the second half we picked up our defensive intensity and we won the game.”
Joseph Thoutenhoofd added 13 points for the Lions while teammate Saheb Chahal added 12.
Centennial goes on to face the St. Patrick’s Celtics in a 6:15 p.m. quarterfinal on Thursday.
VANCOUVER COLLEGE 102 WELLINGTON 82
LANGLEY –Luke Letham wasn’t tyring to pretend that a 102-82 loss to the Quad-A No. 4-ranked Vancouver College Fighting Irish didn’t sting.
But at the same time, with the new season not even two weeks old, the head coach with the Wellington Wildcats was emphatic that the Super 16 bracket here at the 2024 TBI is just what the doctor ordered for his unranked, honourable mention Nanaimo team.
“This is what we needed right here, we needed to come over here and get best competition possible and this has done it for us,” said Letham, whose team will face the loser of a game between the Kelowna Owls and the Terry Fox Ravens of Port Coquitlam in an 8:30 a.m. clash Thursday.
“It’s a great introductory tourney for us to see where we are,” he added.
When the Irish are your barometre, the first thing you’re going to discover is how adept you are at facing pressure defence.
It’s the hallmark of this season’s Vancouver College team, and afterwards, Letham quick to point out their strengths.
“They are smaller and they use it to their advantage and their pressure is where they took advantage,” he said of the Irish. “Their ball movement on offence …they are unselfish Their drive-kick is really hard to stop.”
Put all of that together, with, as Letham notes, a team that loves to share the basketball, and you get six double-figure scorers.
Andres Garcia scored a co-game-high 21 points for the winners.
After that, there was balance galore.
Gianluca Tognetti (16), Lucas Tan-Ngo (16), Marco Mayuga (15) and Nathan Chan (14) combined for 61 points while John Anthony and Lucas Lee each added 10 points apiece.
Wellington’s most unique aspect?
Without question it’s their blend of size and athleticism with its three front court big men, led by dynamic 6-foot-5 Grayson Ritzand who finished with a c0-game-high 21 points.
The 6-foot-9 Brayden Savage added 20 points, while the 6-foot-7 Jackson Peters added 13 more. Guard Holden West scored 11.
TERRY FOX 77 KELOWNA 66
LANGLEY — Let us know if you saw this one coming.
An unranked Terry Fox Ravens team from PoCo opened its season back on Nov. 26 with a 108-63 loss to then-No. 5 Vancouver College in a game in which the Irish hit 17 triples at a 40 per cent clip.
Then cue to this past Saturday when the Ravens, looking to bounce back, took another one on the chin, this time by nine points to Surrey’s Pacific Academy Breakers.
So was all of that the perfect way to prepare for an upset victory against the No. 6-ranked Quad-A Kelowna Owls in the opening round of the Tsumura Basketball Invitational’s Super 16 pool?
Apparently so, as the Ravens’ 77-66 victory tickets them for a 4:30 p.m. Elite Eight rematch with Fighting Irish on Thursday (4:30 p.m.).
“All we’ve talked about for the last eight days is playing harder, so we didn’t play that well tonight but we played hard,” said veteran Fox head coach Rich Chambers, who last season guided as large core of the current team to a B.C. junior varsity title. “We’ve got to be a lot better tomorrow against College.”
They likely will have to be, but more than that, it seems these Ravens — three Grade 10s, a Grade 11 and a senior are in the starting line-up and scored all but four of their 77 points — are suddenly trending in a pretty positive direction despite their prior losses and their youth.
Yet Chambers says if there is anything considered taboo on his team, it’s any talk of age.
“We never talk about it… we never talk about being Grade 10 players… we just talk about being players.”
Whatever works, because intense practices leading up to Wednesday’s TBI opener seemed, according to the coach, seemed to give his young charges a better picture of what hard work is.
And so when the Ravens needed to be tough down the stretch against Kelowna they were.
Jayson Ikani, the 6-foot-4 forward who was selected the MVP at the B.C. junior championships last February, led his team with 10 of his game-high 21 points in the fourth quarter.
Ikani generated six free throw trips in the frame and just generally was the difference maker for his team at crunch time.
Deklen Martin, a 6-foot-3 Grade 10 forward, hit four triples and finished with 16 points. Grade 10 point guard Marvin Reyes added 15 points.
Grade 11 guard Tarun Saroya led the Owls with 17 points while Grade 10 guard Wells Grundy scored seven of his 13 points in the fourth quarter.
“Our effort tonight was 10 times better than the last week,” summed Chambers, “And I am glad we don’t have to play tomorrow at 8:30 in the morning.”
That was the price to be paid for losing, meaning Kelowna will meet Nanaimo’s Wellington Wildcats to open tomorrow’s consolation round schedule.
BURNABY SOUTH 69 WEST VANCOUVER 64
LANGLEY — Change, change, change.
It the most consistent thing in high school basketball.
And if you follow B.C.’s top boys programs closely enough from season to season, it makes for the kind of post-game fodder that can be pretty hard to resist.
Take, for example, the meeting on Thursday in the TBI’s Super 16 bracket between two of B.C.’s most tradition-laden programs: The Burnaby South Rebels and the West Vancouver Highlanders.
The pollsters might say they are each in a down cycle of sorts in 2024-25 when contrasted against Quad A’s hottest programs at place like Spectrum, Dover Bay, Oak Bay and Vancouver College, as well as their own prior successes.
Yet after watching these two schools battle down the stretch ahead of a five-point Rebels’ win, it was interesting to hear in the post game just how much the winds of change have impacted such a regal pair this season.
Burnaby South?
The off-season prep school transfer of 6-foot-9 Keoni Sacco, a true game-changing force, has steered the Rebels towards an entirely different style of play… one which head coach Mike Bell said his players are doing their best to work towards mastering.
“These kids are starting to work hard,” said Bell after the win over West Van, one which included six triples as part of a team-high 22-points from senior guard Aidan Kim.
“Losing Keoni was a big blow, he obviously cleaned up a lot for our mistakes. We’re small and I am encouraging them to shoot the ball… it’s little different than always demanding the ball (in the paint) and having the big kids involved.”
Indeed Burnaby South and its recent championship run had been built on the shoulders of a string of big-bodied centres able to affect the game through the pivot.
Now, Bell is pushing tempo, and he’s even got a model of the schematic and the mindset that he feels could work.
“I want them to play more like Kelowna,” he said of the Harry Parmar-coached group which has thrived with the likes guards Nash Semeniuk and Mason Bourcier behind the steering wheel.
“I love the way Kelowna is just fearless… you give them a space and they are shooting it. Regardless of outcomes and scores, it’s how they play.”
Then there is West Vancouver, under the control of veteran head coach Paul Eberhardt.
Last season, his Highlanders ran in a pack with the province’s elite, powered by seniors like Finn Chapman, Max Ndolvu-Fraser, Zeyad Ahmed and a Grade 11 point guard named Calvin Kuzyk.
On Wednesday, as the lone returning starter from last season’s team which lost to eventual B.C. champ Spectrum 59-52 in the Final Four, there has been a period of growth as the rest of the team joins Kuzyk, who scored 38 in the loss to South, in building top-to-bottom roster chemistry.
“He has to carry a big load and today was interesting because it’s the first game (this season) a team was double-teamming him all game,” said Eberhardt. “I thought we didn’t handle that well as a team because guys are not used to it. But I thought Calvin handled it quite well. I didn’t know he scored 38.”
The ceiling for his team, Eberhardt feels, is high. But the process of playing tough foes and learning on the job in order to get there is going to take up a large part of the early schedule.
“Last year the (then-)Grade 11’s were part of a strong Grade 12 team, so they learned a lot in practice. But it’s one thing to learn a lot in practice and another when the pressure is on in the games, and that is why I am so happy we’re playing all of these really tough games early in the year. We’re going to grow from it. Our ability to improve is going to be very high.”
Interesting to note, as well, that although the Highlanders didn’t look like an especially long and tall team, the reality is that they are.
It’s 6-foot-9 post Luis Lara Alvarez, starting 6-foot-6 small forward Cassius Gregorian and 6-foot-6 Max Dean all missed the game.
“We’re 6-9, 6-6, 6-6, 6-5, 6-5 so this is one of the biggest teams I’ve ever had,” added Eberhardt. “Those guys are good players but they need experience. I am pretty excited about this group. By the time February rolls around, we’ll be pretty tough.”
It’s going to be something to watch… all the ways two expert coaches affect positive change with their players between now and the start of March Madness.
No guarantees they get invited to the big dance, of course. But the beauty of this game is watching to see how it all turns out.
DOVER BAY 92 G.W. GRAHAM 67
LANGLEY — Jake Mourtizen knows that he is riding the beginnings of what could well be a cresting wave with his G.W. Graham Grizzlies senior boys basketball program and the younger age-group teams which are set to feed it over the next few seasons.
So on a night when the Chilliwack-based squad dropped a decisive 25-point decision to Nanaimo’s Quad-A No. 2-ranked Dover Bay Dolphins, all allusions to water are intended.
And that’s because Mouritzen is trying to station his team to make a similar kind of a splash.
“That’s the measuring stick right now,” the ever-energetic veteran coach said, pointing in the direction of the Dolphins’ bench and its head coach Darren Seaman.
“Love what they are doing and we’re young but we’re coming, and we’re coming from all the way down.”
Watching the younger Grizzlies doing their thing against the Dolphins’ frontliners gives you the kind of perspective that instantly informs how ready the Grizz are to make a breakthrough.
None of this, of course, is to deny the excellence of the Dolphins because Frank Linder’s game-high 30 points, and the 17 more supplied by forward Hudson Trood seemed to come straight off the court from last week’s Kodiak Classic title-game win over Oak Bay and right onto the Centre Court complex at the LEC.
G.W. Graham’s players, to their credit, did not back down from the challenges of a vaunted opponent, and that much is apparent just watching their body language as they got into their own offensive sets.
The success rate, of course, is going to be lower against a team like the Dolphins, but studied observers, I think, can see that they are headed in the right direction.
“We’re smaller at every position, we’re giving up 20 pounds and they’re still trying to buy in,” continued the coach.
“The challenge today in basketball is we want the kids to play empowered and play the way they want to play, but also to believe and trust in a system, and that is where we are right now. We’re still getting them to believe in that, but we don’t want to take away who they are. That is what every coach is doing right now… I hope.”
Andrii Zhukov, rapidly carving out a high-rotation role with Dover, added 12 points for the winners.
Nick Baker led the Grizzlies with 21 points, while Beckett Goertzen scored 16 points.
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