LANGLEY — Welcome to Quarterfinal Thursday here at the 2025 Tsumura Basketball Invitational.
We’ve gone final for the night. Here are all four game reports:
SUPER 16
(South Court)
DRAW A
ST. PATRICK 99 ARGYLE 72
LANGLEY — There is something to be said for precision, that united state of mind and body that has best been manifested during the first two days of the TBI Super 16 by one team in particular: East Vancouver’s St. Patricks Celtics.
With seven seconds left in the third quarter of its quarterfinal game Thursday agaunst North Vancouver’s Argyle Pipers, the Celts got the ball into the hands of guard Riley Santa Juana.
The senior point guard dribbled the ball up the court to the count of the game clock provided by the St. Patricks’ bench.
Santa Juana pulled up at the top of the arc for a three that he swished with about a half-second remaining, the dagger giving the Triple-A No. 1 Celtics a 79-57 lead after 30 minutes en route to an eventual 99-72 victory over the No. 4 Pipers.
“That’s an actual play,” said winning head coach Nap Santos, whose team advances to Friday’s Final Four against the winner of MEI-Vancouver College game. “We’ve been running that play since they were in Grade four, so they were ready for that.”
And on this night, it was the best example of the drilled-in-wool, muscle-memory mindset that makes St. Pats so unflappable, and without getting too technical, all of that is on display when you watch the size-challenged group get after it at both ends of the floor.
“I mean, they’re so athletic,” said Argyle head coach Jamie Oei, whose young team, winners of last season’s B.C. JV title, came in with more than a significant height advantage. “They’re such good players. We had a game plan but we didn’t follow it. You don’t follow the game plan, then you have problems. We couldn’t keep them in front of us.
“Those guys play way above their height,” Oei continued of the Celtics. “They always have, they always do. We try to use our height to our advantage, but they’re everywhere. So if you don’t… our game plan was to keep the game in the 70s or 80s, you let them score (near) 100, you’re going to lose the game.”
Santa Juana was without peer Friday, finishing with a game-high 36 points, pouring home points in all the myriad ways that such a voluminous total suggests.
Jemuel Castro added 24 points and Dhyne Cotin a further 18 points.
The Szpak Brothers were once again integral for the Pipers.
Logan Szpak finished with a team-high 32 points while Nathan Szpak added 22 points.
MEI 66 VANCOUVER COLLEGE 64
LANGLEY — On Wednesday, Abbotsford’s MEI Eagles used a stern 2-3 zone defence to upset Nanaimo’s No. 2 Quad-A Dover Bay Dolphins.
Afterwards head coach Mike Lee called it such a rarity for his team that you came away from the conversation thinking it was something more akin to a junk defence.
On Thursday, Lee kept that zone in his back pocket the entire evening, never tempted to even flash it like an emergency ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card.
Instead, with his senior-laden squad getting back to its true man-to-man identity, Triple-A No. 2 MEI won an absolute squeaker, getting huge plays down the stretch drive from a somewhat unheralded Grade 12 named Gabe Headley to beat Quad-A No. 5 Vancouver College 66-64, earning a spot in Friday’s TBI Final Four against the Triple-A No. 1 St. Patrick’s Celtics.
Afterwards, Lee was counting the blessings that come with having such an unflappable core of seniors imbedded into his team’s rotation.
“We have a ton of veterans, we’re a heavy Grade 12 team,” he said. “And I don’t know what the percentages are, but Grade 12-heavy teams tend to do well all the time, right? So it’s a testament to them, They’re no strangers to big games. So when you’re best guys, your oldest guys, don’t get rattled in the moment, you’re really lucky as a coach. Really lucky.”
Of course, the presence that senior 6-foot-5 guard Mercer Thiessen brings is unmistakable, inside and out.
Big threes in the third quarter, poise at the free throw line, and a game-high 25 points in what was scarppy, low-scoring affair… that was Thiessen’s contribution on Thursday’
Kaden Vandervelden, the big man so pivotal in the win over Dover Bay added 10 points.
But the win probably doesn’t happen without the clutch fourth-quarter play of Headley.
Just the last three minutes was ample proof of that.
First, he breaks a 60-60 tie with a dead-eye triple with 2:24 on the clock.
After Vancouver College pulls to within 63-62, he stays busy in the paint, chasing down a long rebound off the offensive glass to save possession.
He then fed guard Jaiden Buttar who was promptly fouled and hit both of his free throws for a 65-62 lead with 1:11 remaining.
“He’s worked on his game and he looks great,” Lee said of the 6-foot-2 senior. “He didn’t spend as much time in the weight room as I would have liked. But hey, I’ll take all those effort plays and those hustle plays every time. You know, heart, above all.”
Vancouver College head coach Ryan Shams said his team’s goal was to push tempo.
“Obviously it’s frustrating, but we wanted to try to speed them up and play fast, which I think we did at times because obviously they’re really skilled down low,” said Shams. “They got big guys that can play, so we just wanted to use our speed and run, right? But unfortunately, they came out on top. They’re a great team. You saw what they did to Dover Bay last night.”
Ashton Wong led the Irish with 19 points while Lucas Tang-Ngo added 16 points.
So now, in what is beginning to look like B.C. Triple-A basketball’s finest hour since its move to a four-tiered province, here come the MEI Eagles and the St. Patricks Celtics in a semifinal that could well be a preview to the actual B.C. title game this March. Of course it’s too early to make proclamations, especially because there are so many other great 3A schools and the calendar has just turned to December.
But that’s the fun part.
DRAW B
TERRY FOX 71 GW GRAHAM 65
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — In the moments before his team took to the floor on Wednesday afternoon to open its four-day run here at the TBI Super 16 against Fleetwood Park of Surrey, Terry Fox Ravens head coach Rich Chambers spotted a reporter he’s been talking to since the mid-1980s with a thought the ink-stained scribe could have sworn he’s heard a few time before.
“We’re not playing good basketball at all,” he said. “We’re not very good.”
Just over 30 hours later, after PoCo’s Ravens scratched and clawed their way to a 71-66 win over the equally scrappy G.W. Graham Grizzlies of Chilliwack in a hotly-contested quarterfinal matchup, Chambers was still not ready to get all warm and fuzzy.
Yet one of the true deans of the active B.C. boys high school coaching fraternity had thawed enough to acknowledge that a run to the TBI’s Super 16 Final Four in perhaps the most competitive non-playoff bracket the province will see this season was indeed a measure better than a serving of cold toast in the morning.
“The way we were playing, I didn’t think we would win a game in the tournament, so I’m glad we’re playing tomorrow night,” said Chambers as the Ravens advance to Friday’s semifinal against the winner of the Tamanawis-Kelowna game.
If they were a kind of horse, what kind of horse would these Ravens be?
“We’re not a thoroughbred,” he said. “We have moments of brilliance and then we have moments like, you just shake your head. But I think we have a huge upside here. And that’s what we always go for because we want to be playing well on March, right?”
Exactly.
On Thursday, the Ravens took advantage of a slow first-half by the Grizzlies, who themselves were coming off a momentum-building opening-round win over the St. Georges Saints on Wednesday.
Terry Fox’s 6-foot-8 senior post-forward Maksym Cicheki scored 10 of his 28 points in the opening quarter, and the Ravens twice led by game-high margins of 17 points in the first half.
The Grizzlies then woke up from their slumber and came roaring back to life, coming all the way back to tie the game 65-65 when senior guard Cenny Solla hit a pair of free throws with 30 seconds remaining.
That’s when Terry Fox’s diminutive 5-foot-9 Grade 11 guard Ricky Adam made the defensive play of the game.
Adam came through with a takeaway of a Grizzlies’ entry pass into the paint and drew a foul in the process.
Adam then calmly sunk both free throws with 17.6 seconds remaining to ultimately salt away the win.
After its dizzying performance against St. Georges the day before, was it a case of the Grizz losing their collective equilibrium?
Grizz coach Jake Mouritzen put it in his own language.
“We were teenagers,” he said. “And it’s early in the season. Super proud of them coming back because that was the best part. The first half was a letdown. Maybe it was from yesterday, but it’s good to learn and the opportunity to play these teams right now here in this tournament is priceless.”
Mourtizen seems the type of high school coach to perhaps bring another generation’s worth of years to the noble profession.
What does he think of going head to head with the veteran Chambers?
“They’ve got one of the best coaches of all time,” he said. “He’s going to pounce all day, and that’s what they did. They took advantage of those early turnovers, and they made their early buckets, the ones that we missed. And that’s what you expect from Terry Fox.”
Nick Baker led the Grizzlies with 18 points, while Solla added 15 and Kale Bartel another dozen.
TAMANAWIS 90 KELOWNA 83
By HOWARD TSUMURA
LANGLEY — The two biggest takeaways from Thursday’s final Super 16 quarterfinal between Kelowna and Tamanawis here at TBI 2025?
First, even on a night when they aren’t at their very best, whether due to their opposition or themselves, Tammy’s Wildcats are still the toughest out in B.C. boys high school basketball.
Second, look out for the Kelowna Owls, because even though they didn’t get what would have been a signature win early in the season, they are starting to showing the same elements that have made them a provincial contender for the past decade plus.
Tamanawis, No. 1 in the B.C. Quad-A poll, built a 13-point lead over the Owls after the first quarter, then proceeded to weather storm after No. 6 Kelowna storm the rest of the way, including a lightning surge with 56 seconds remaining which cut their lead to just three points, before eventually winning 90-83.
The victory sends the Surrey school into Friday’s Final Four against the Quad-A honourable mention Terry Fox Ravens of Port Coquitlam.
“Tonight we looked very tired and we had a couple guys sick and the rotation went a little bit short and then we were gassing out a bit,” said Tamanawis head coach Mike McKay. “But I mean, we still got to 90 in a way we don’t really want to play. So I mean, that’s at least a positive from that side of things.”
Kelowna led 3-0 but never led again the rest of the night, yet that 13-point Tamanawis lead got cut to just six points (38-32) at the half when the Owls put on a physical press that caused turnovers and allowed them to get back into the game.
“They were still in their beds,” Kelowna head coach Harry Parmar said of his team”s slow start after the game. “And that’s what they’ve got to learn, that they got to be ready to go when the ball goes up. Other than that, I thought it was pretty, pretty back and forth.”
Kelowna’s Wells Grundy hit four triples and finished with a team-high 23 points, but the revelation this weekend is just how much dangerous the Owls have become over the course of one week after getting senior guards Jake McParland and Finn Stewart back in the rotation following volleyball provincials.
Stewart seemed especially pivotal on Thursday in the ways that he engaged himself on the defensive end, leading the press with his indefatigable style of play.
That and the fact that he scored greasy inside stuff as part of a 22-point performance. McParland added 15 and Logan Parker another 14 for Kelowna.
Tamanawis produced four double-digit scorers as well.
Guards Aanand Sandhu and Gurjowan Cheema had 17 and 15 points respectively while forward Victor Cortel had 19 points.
The wildcard?
The X factor?
Tammy’s 6-foot-11 senior forward/centre Luka Guzina, the cousin of UBC’s fourth-year 6-foot-10 standout Nikola Guzina, scored 30 points, the majority it seemed, as direct answers to Kelowna uprisings.
In the final 90 seconds of the fourth quarter, the Owls got back-to-back-to-back buckets from Humraj Chahal, McParland, and Stewart over a span of 30 seconds to move within a possession at 86-83.
Alas, Guzina stepped up with an offensive rebound and putback, then another putback to slam the door on a Kelowna upset.
“I mean, it’s always nice to have like a 6-11 guy,” acknowledged McKay of Guzina. “You can throw the ball into the middle of the court … and there’s not much you can do about that defensively.”
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