LANGLEY — The St. Thomas More Knights of 2024-25 first gained their notiriety in the B.C. high school basketball world by winning the junior provincial title in 2023 as the No. 11 seed in the massive event’s 32-team bracket.
As that tournament’s history will tell you, it’s not always a translateable guarantee of success at the senior varsity level.
To some teams it’s a ticket to ride, to others it’s the kiss of death.
Those Knights are all seniors this season, ranked No. 3 in the latest B.C. Triple-A Top 10, and this week here at TBI stirring up all manner of fuss with the basketball gods as a Super 16 tourney title contender.
Huh?
On Friday, despite playing the final 14:07 without the services of star guard/forward Zeru Abera who was lost to fouls, St. Thomas More somehow found a way to jam the gear-box of its arch-nemesis Vancouver College, grinding out an 82-74 victory over the Quad-A No. 4 Fighting Irish in the TBI semifinals, earning a spot in today’s 4:45 p.m. title tilt against Nanaimo’s Dover Bay Dolphins.
Last season, on its way to winning the B.C. Triple-A title, the Dolphins dispatched a largely-Grade 11 STM squad 89-65 in the provincial quarterfinals.
This season, Dover Bay has moved up to the Quad-A tier where it sits No. 2.
After Friday’s win by the Knights over the Irish, STM head coach Denzel Laguerta was asked just how revelatory the struggles last year’s team endured as JV champs trying to prove themselves at the next level has ultimately been in terms of growing into a provincial title contender this season.
“We were really hard on them going into their Grade 11 year… kind of knocking down their ego just a little bit and they responded really well,” smiled Laguerta after win. “It’s a credit to them. They are humble kids.”
With, of course, the ability to summon the perfect amount of emotion and swagger to the fit the size of the moment.
On Friday, with the stakes high, it was impossible for them to hide it.
When Abera was forced to bench with 4:24 left in the third quarter and the game locked in a 50-50 tie you could almost hear the literary forces pre-writing the details of what was assumed to be their imminent demise.
Yet that’s just about the time three cornerstone Knights seemed, in unison, to lift the respective the level of their games.
Lead guard Jacob Oreta (18 points), swingman Shane Deza (16), both seniors, and Grade 11 post Logan Ball (16) led an uprising along with under-rated long-armed senior guard Joey Nguyen (13) that combined to score 63 of the team’s 82 points.
That quartet, in fact, combined to score all but two of the team’s 24 fourth-quarter points.
“Again, I’m a broken record, but it’s cool the culture we have and that is the leadership of our captains, you know?” said Laguerta. “Everybody is ready to have that next man up mentality.”
When asked what his team did to so successfully flummox what might be the best three-point shooting team in the province, Laguerta pointed out that the similarities between the Knights and Irish made it a little more manageable than many might have thought.
“It worked to our favour because we are also kind of perimetre-oriented and so the guys just switched on everything, so it was easier for us to handle that.”
That’s not to say, by any stretch, that STM completely shut down the Irish three-point game because stealth guard Andres Garcia, maybe the best of the VC bunch, still knocked down four threes as part of a game-high 33 point night.
Yet the kind of ball movement that led to 18 threes last Saturday in Vancouver College’s 89-68 third-place victory over Kelowna at the Heritage Woods Kodiak Classic almost seemed like a rumour, the Irish trying to find, without luck, something it could hang its hat on at the offensive end of the floor.
Against STM, the Irish went into the fourth quarter trailing just 57-53 but hit just two more three-pointers the rest of the way. Combine that with the fact that it managed to manufacture just four trips to the free throw line in the final frame, an you get the true indication of how much both its inside and outside forces were out of synch.
Ashton Wong added 12 more for the Irish wile Lucas Lee added nine on three triples.
And thus, regardless of what happens Saturday night, it was benchmark game for both teams as it relates to self-reflection and determining for each precisely what does and doesn’t work.
From St. Thomas More’s viewpoint, Laguerta can confirm that the struggles endured last season for the core of the 2023 B.C. junior champs was a necessary step towards in its evolution.
“Last season was about just coming together and knowing how to communicate with each other,” he said “I don’t know if you can see it on the court, but they are able to hold each other accountable. I don’t have to really say anything. I ask them what we’re running or if they are OK with our coverages. Then, it’s all them.”
If the goal is to grow through empowerment, that’s the proof for every coach out there that to ignore the process is to cheat the game and its kids.
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