LANGLEY — Welcome to Day 2 of the girls 2025 Tsumura Basketball Invitational Super 16 bracket.
Here are your four quarterfinal championship game reports.
SUPER 16
TOP SIDE DRAW
HOLY CROSS 83 LANGLEY CHRISTIAN 64
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — ‘Deep and dangerous’ is a basketball descriptor that tends to get overused, but not when you’re talking about Surrey’s Holy Cross Crusaders.
On Thursday, in the Double-A No. 1 Crusaders’ 83-64 TBI Super 16 quarterfinal win over the Triple-A No. 3 Langley Christian Lightning, Holy Cross looked like a basketball team that had every element a team could need right there at their disposal, not the least of which was a superstar who plays as hard on defence as she does on offence in 6-foot senior forward Solene Jackson.
But perhaps most of all, the Crusaders are who they are because of the way they are able to deploy what is basically a 10-player rotation with complete and utter trust in their abilities… and that includes seven guards along with Jackson, 6-foot-1 Alyssia Palma and 5-foot-10 Meghan McCash.
“We’re really lucky to have length because we don’t typically have length,” said Holy Cross head coach Amy Beauchamp, whose team will play in Friday’s Final Four against Thursday’s Argyle-Charles Best quarterfinal. “And our bigs are just so tall and lanky that we guard… they can guard bigs and they can guard smalls, and they block a lot of shots. And the way we can move our guards around, if one gets into foul trouble then we basically have the same guard coming in.”
In a nutshell, that’s like saying, when they’re at their best, it’s hard for the opposition to take a breath.
On Thursday, the Crusaders gained their early seperation through a 14-0 run which ran between the first two quarters and put the Surrey school ahead 31-16.
Jackson was superb for the Crusaders off the opening tip, scoring 11 of her game-high 31 points in the first 10 minutes, including one in which she made a steal at the front of the Holy Cross defence and turned it into an instant sprint to the rim for a layin.
“Solene is like the heart of our team,” said Beauchamp. “She does it offensively. She does it defensively. I trust her wholeheartedly and she can guard their best player, and then she can still score 25. So she is so important to our team and a lot of our success is because of her.”
In the second half, the Crusaders continued to roll a 10-player rotartion at the Lightning.
Back in a zone defence, Holy Cross’ Mia Guerrero, the compact Grade 11 guard, made a steal out of that zone, fast-broke down the court, and got the ball to her trailing teammate Palma, who made a hoop through contact for an 80-57 lead with 3:45 remaining in the game.
Chloe Mangalindan, a 5-foot-3 guard who plays with the pperfect blen of power and finesse, scored 14 in the win.
Talented Langley Christian got 20 points from guard Payton Brunoro and 15 from guard Emma Lenhoff.
ARGYLE 67 DR. CHARLES BEST 26
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — The first thing you notice about the Argyle Pipers is their size.
And when it gets the touches it needs down low, it’s hard to bet against the Quad-A No. 3-ranked team from North Vancouver.
On Thursday, as the TBI Super 16 arrived at its quarterfinal round, it was impossible not to notice just how dominant it can be when the Pipers’ post players are given the opportunity to do what they do best in the paint.
First there was 6-foot senior forward Isabella Miljkovic scoring 18 of her 22 points in an opening half in which the Pipers led 33-11 at intermission.
Then there was 6-foot-5 post Eva Woodward scoring 12 of her 14 in the second half.
Add the 14 points of 5-foot-10 Grade 10 forward Hazel Pontin, not all in the paint, and you had accounted for 50 of the team’s points in what was a decisive 67-26 win over Coquitlam’s Quad-A No. 7-ranked Dr. Charles Best Blue Devils.
“With us, it’s really about getting the ball inside and using the size we have and then that’ll open up everything else outside for us,” acknowledged Pipers’ assistant coach Mike Kidd. “Where we can get kind of hamstrung, and it’s happened to us in years past, is where we get really heavy with shooting the ball outside and not actually using our size. When we can get the ball inside, make the defence have to back up, it’ll open up our outside shots. That’s when we’re playing at our best.”
The most curious stat emerging from Thursday’s win?
Despite their penchant for pounding the ball inside, the Pipers only took four free throws all game, all by their guards.
For Kidd, the key for the team is to make finding that sweet spot between inside-out play seem like a natural team instinct. And that’s another way of saying, on a team filled with three-point shooting as well, finding the perfect marriage it’s not as easy as it sounds.
“In basketball these days, the three is what what’s hot, so everybody wants to shoot the three,” he said. “We like to shoot the three. We’re heavy into shooting three, but it’s about shooting the right shot at the right time. And we want to play our game, too, right? We want to impose our will against teams. We don’t want to fall back into the trap of just jacking up threes.”
Curiously, only five triples were sunk the entire game, including four by the Pipers.
Argyle advances to Friday’s Final Four with the win and will face the Double-A No. 1 Holy Cross Crusaders of Surrey with a berth to Saturday’s championship final on the line.
BOTTOM SIDE DRAW
RIVERSIDE 76 VERNON 60
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — When you’re a B.C. high school basketball coach that is best described as “…a veteran’s veteran” then even simple post-game statements carry a lot of weight.
And so after his Quad-A No. 2 Riverside Rapids battled to a hard-fought 76-60 win over the Triple-A No. 2 Vernon Panthers in the TBI Super 16 quarterfinals here Thursday night at the LEC, Rapids head coach Paul Langford made sure his opening remark was brief and to the point.
“The tier doesn’t matter, does it?” Langford said, referencing the point that this season, more than ever, you can’t judge the quality of a team by the size of its school population.
Indeed, for the second straight night, Vernon’s Panthers brought their effort, their energy and their execution to the fore against a provincially-ranked Quad-A team.
On Wednesday, it was a 61-52 win over Quad-A No. 10 Semiahmoo.
On Thursday, it wasn’t quite the same result, yet there is no doubt that Riverside didn’t put in a sub-par effort and simply coast to a win.
It was one of the games where everyone on the winning team knew that if they had an extended lapse, they would be on the wrong end of a huge upset.
And so, as Vernon got a taste of what it’s like to poke the so-called bear, so too did a young Riverside team learn that not all 15-20 point wins are created equally.
“Well, it seemed like they hit every open shot, No. 14 (Adie Janke) is amazing, and (head coach) Dave (Tetrault) does such a good job with them year in and year, out,” said Langford. “They know how to play basketball.”
Vernon trailed just 22-21 in the second quarter, and never folded despite later absorbing runs of 21-7, 60-47, and a game closing 6-0.
For perspective from the grey-haired end of the media table, their collective persona could be said to resemble that of the former Canadian heavyweight champion George Chuvalo.
When kids today Google him, they’ll find out that he fought 93 pro bouts and was never knocked out, even in his two fights against the immortal Muhammad Ali.
“All I want from my team is to never give up,” said Tetrault. “Don’t ever give up. And they didn’t.
“I keep talking to my team about playing through mistakes. We’re going to turn it over sometimes. I’m trying to get them to play through everything. You know what I mean? And it’s hard because they’re not used to being down. So there’s a lot of psychology going on here.
“I mean, we’re playing one of the best teams in the province, and they (Riverside) are playing awesome. (Langford) told me he didn’t sleep last night because he was worried about us. I mean, that’s a compliment to my kids.”
This would need a little research before it became a published paper, but this ink-stained scribe is pretty certain that in the 2000’s, the Quad-A program with most consistent record of getting to the provincials is Riverside. And the Triple-A program with the same disitinction is Vernon.
So maybe that is part of what added up to such a mutual respect society after the game.
The truth is, Riverside is also due its roses.
We wrote in this space yesterday about the fact they have but two seniors and are still looking to find their identity as a team.
With all that, Grade 11 forward’s Henna Virk’s 20 points were huge, as were the 19 of Grade 9 guard Ari Brown.
“I thought we played well,” said Langford of his charges, who advance to Friday’s Final Four against the Seaquam-G.W. Graham winner. “We’re super young. We’ve got room to improve.”
SEAQUAM 71 G.W. GRAHAM 50
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — Callie Brost wanted her senior season to be one in which she would have no regrets.
And when the combination of a re-aggravation of star forward Camryn Tait’s foot injury, and last season’s heavy grad totals had whittled away so much of what made the Seaquam Seahawks two-time defending provincial Quad-A champions, Brost just listened to her inner voice.
“I just had that mentality of like coming out of my shell a bit this year,” the 5-foot-10 senior guard said of the fact that with Tait currently taking some extra time to nurse her prior foot injury, that she and returning guard Syra Toor would inherit the lion’s share of the offensive responsibilities.
“I wanted to try to drive to the hoop more and get my shot up,” she said as her No. 1-ranked Seahawks took on Chilliwack’s No. 4-ranked G.W. Graham Grizzlies in the quarterfinal round of the TBI’s Super 16 bracket at the Langley Events Centre. “So that’s what I did this game.”
Boy, did she ever.
Playing in tandem with Toor in the backcourt, Brost looked as self-empowered as she ever has over the course of her senior varsity career, pouring home a game-high 30 points, all of which came over the first three quarters.
With Seaquam leading 64-31 after three quarters, she didn’t return to play in the fourth as the Seahawks came away 71-50 winners, earning a Final Four berth Friday against No. 2 Riverside.
“You know Callie was getting some paint on them early and getting downhill so they probably had to take away some driving lanes because Callie was having a game today,” said coach Toor.
And her successes spoke to an even larger question for a Seaquam team trying to win a third straight B.C. Quad-A title.
With Tait currently injured, and with an able but inexperienced core just now starting to come into their own, how much G-force are Brost and Syra Toor capable of generating?
Turns out plenty.
Toor herself added 14 points, when the Seahawks went on a 17-4 third-quarter-ending run, it was Brost and Toor seemingly taking turns, collectively combining for five triples in seven possessions.
“Me and Syra, we definitely feed off each other’s energy, too,” said Brost. “So when she’s hitting shots, that kind of like motivates me to hit shots as well. With Cam’s injury, we have to step up and kind of put the team on our back and be those leaders that our team needs.”
The Grizzlies were led by the 14 points of Holly-Rae Myrden and and the 12 of Katie Schmitke.
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