Welcome to Final Four Friday.
We’ve got reports from both of today’s Tsumura Basketball Invitational Select 16 semifinals right here.
Check back with us throughout the day as we set up Championship Saturday’s title game.
NOTRE DAME 52 MARK ISFELD 36
LANGLEY — In a little media pre-game chat, Notre Dame head coach Tracy Clarke offered a reporter a warning that her Double-A No. 4-ranked Jugglers needy to play some scrappy, desperate basketball if they wanted to get to the TBI’s Select 16 championship final on Saturday afternoon.
Just under two hours later, following her team’s 52-36 win over Courtenay’s Triple-A No. 6-ranked Mark Isfeld Ice in the semifinals, truer words could not have been spoken.
In a game littered with turnovers, collisions and missed points in the paint, East Vancouver’s Jugglers somehow found a way to find some late flow and play their best basketball as the fourth-quarter buzzer was sounding.
But all of the stuff that came before it?
“We had to dig our heels in and scrape and claw, get a lot of fouls and do silly things and learn throughout the game,” Clarke said, “and I thought they came out and they showed their grit. They did well.”
And what did Clarke say when reminded of her pre-game comments?
“I would say that for us, grit is it,” she rhymed. “Grit is it. Obviously you have to have skill and IQ and we have that, but grit is going to make the difference. If we have grit, I can work with that.”
Especially when league play gives way to the playoffs on the road to the B.C. championships right back here at the Langley Events Centre.
Lyla Mach, listed the team’s 5-foot-6 forward/centre, battled through foul problems and returned late to make a difference, finishing with a game-high 16 points. Joanna Pepe added 12 in the win while the backcourt duo of Selina Quilitan and Emily Chan scored 10 each.
Elayna Russell led the Ice with 10 points, while forward Phoebe Cunningham scored eight points.
DUCHESS PARK 51 VERNON 50
LANGLEY — It seemed like a heaven-sent 10-0 run.
All game long, Prince George’s Duchess Park Condors looked like they were stuck in mud on the offensive side of the floor here in the semifinals of the 2024 Tsumura Basketball Invitational’s Select 16 tourney.
The Panthers spent the first three quarters averaging 12 points per 10 minutes, which was a near-mirror average of what their opposition, the Vernon Panthers, were managing.
But then, over a magical span of just 2:19 in the fourth quarter, the defence seems to push a button, and all of a sudden steals are turning into fast-break layups and a berth in Saturday’s TBI Select 16 final looks well within your grasp.
That’s almost what happened.
The Condors did indeed mount a 10-0 run to take a 46-42 lead when Zahra Ngabo, a 5-foot-8 Grade 10 guard, capped the run by turning a steal into a bucket.
But arch-nemesis Vernon answered with three-pointers from guards Kenidy West and Chloe Collins to claw back and take a 50-48 lead with just over a minute later.
Yet still feeling the mojo of their earlier run, Ngabo’s cousin, 5-foot-6 senior guard Mercedes Black made the play of the game, turning a steal into a driving lay-up through contact.
And when she closed out the resulting and-one opportunity from the free-throw line with 36 seconds let, her team was able to hold on for a 51-50 victory.
“In the second half we picked ourselves up as a team and we got into transition, it’s our comfort zone and we were able to bring the game back,” said Ngabo, who along with Black, led the team with 10 points apiece.
“We weren’t ourselves in the first half,” she continued as No. 5 Vernon led No. 4 Duchess Park 33-24 at the half in a battle of Top 10 Triple-A teams. “But then we finally brought back our defensive intensity, getting steals and running.”
Duchess Park head coach Reid Roberts was relieved his team, in one of its lowest scoring games of the season, was able to rediscover its identity in time to book a a 3 p.m. date in Saturday’s finals against Double-A No. 4-ranked Notre Dame Jugglers of East Vancouver.
“I just felt that (Vernon) was getting to every 50/50 ball and I was pleading with (my players) ‘You just have to play with some urgency here.”
Of course the two teams have gotten used to facing each other in key moments at both tournaments and in the provincial tournament.
And there is something about their styles that seem sto make for close games.
So they played 10 times in a row?
“It’ll be just like that every time,” said Roberts. “I knew it was going to be a dogfight. They are relentless and they have so much talent, and they were the ones who started out getting all loose balls I wanted my team to get.”
Adie Janie, the Panthers’ 5-foot-11 Grade 11 forward scored a game-high 11 points in the loss, while Collins added 10 and Grade 10 guard Charlotte Routley eight, all in the second quarter.
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