Welcome to Final Four Friday.
We’ve got reports from both of today’s Tsumura Basketball Invitational Super 16 semifinals right here.
Check back with us throughout the day as we set up Championship Saturday’s title game.
SEAQUAM 79 RIVERSIDE 66
LANGLEY — If you can shoot it, really shoot it, nothing can stop you.
That may be Basketball 101 stripped to one of its most basic axioms, yet to those who can back it up, basketball can indeed become a simple game.
Syra Toor wasn’t thinking about any of that when the No. 1-seeded Seaquam Seahawks stopped onto the floor to face the No. 3-seeded Riverside Rapids in the first of two Tsumura Basketball Invitational semifinals on Friday.
The Seahawks’ Grade 11 guard was simply doing what she does best, and in jaw-dropping, curtain-rising style, that is just what she did.
Toor hit five straight triples in the opening quarter, then added another in the second and third quarters, all part of a ruthless showing of three-point shooting marksmanship tucked into a game-high 23-point night.
The end result?
The Seahawks played off of everything that dominance brought on its way to a 79-66 win that was far more lopsided than the final score indicated.
“That’s my job on the team, to shoot the ball, and I knew coming into this game that if I shoot well in the first half, that they are going to zero in on me and that is going to open up other options for other players. That’s how we got the big lead.”
Seaquam led 44-30 at the half and then 73-47 after three before both teams emptied their benches in the fourth quarter and the Rapids ended the game on a 17-0 run.
The game answered every question as to who the better team was.
Yet afterwards, both head coaches independently agreed that Riverside’s game plan to start the game was the right one.
It just didn’t take into account the fact that Toor would so quickly find a Zen-induced zone from which to shoot the ball.
“I thought we were outstanding in the first quarter but they hit every shot,” Rapids’ head coach Paul Langford said. “And they hit them close to the (shotclock) buzzer. It was a shooting clinic for them.”
Indeed even with Toor’s five treys in the first quarter, Seaquam only led by seven points (27-20) after the first 10 minutes.
Sometimes, getting red-hot early can be a false indication of how well an entire team is operating. And when that magic fizzles, good things usually don’t happen. That, of course, was not the case Friday.
“To be honest with you I thought Riverside had a phenomenal game plan and they played a great first quarter,” said Syra’s dad, Seaquam head coach Lucky Toor. “Not going to lie, I thought we were a bit lucky. I know we have good shooters on our team, but some times I feel that is a recipe for disaster. But we hit some good shots, some contested, some tough, just to stay in the game and weather that storm.”
Yet there was no doubting that Syra Toor’s shooting made a statement.
The Seahawks played off of that, then dug in at the other end of the floor to build a 25-point lead after three quarters.
“We started to focus on defensive matchups,” said coach Toor. “We started out a little tentative but then we came up with a few different looks from the last time we played them.. we settled into who we wanted to be for the rest of this game.”
Camryn Tait and Sydney Roufosse found success inside and scored 13 points apiece for the winners. Callie Brost, Neelum Sidhu and Mackenzie Henderson each scored eight points.
“Seaquam, they got everything you want in a drugstore,” Langford said, seemingly re-purposing an age-old line from a familiar radio or TV jingle. “They got shooting, they got rebounding, they got size. So they were good and we struggled a little bit and we need to execute better.”
Jorja Hart and Henna Virk scored 16 and 14 points respectively in the loss, while Francesca Salonga, a Grade 9 guard, and senior Annabelle Neufeld added 10 each.
BROOKSWOOD 69 ARGYLE 60
LANGLEY — There was a moment in the second half of the Tsumura Basketball Invitational’s Super 16 semifinal when Cheryl Jean-Paul, the analyst on the TFSETV.ca broadcast, made an observation as to a big reason why Langley’s Brookswood Bobcats were so dialled in as a team on defence.
In a sequence in which they were both defending in the greasy areas of the paint, star teammates Jordyn Nohr and Ashley Vande Ven both wound up on the floor in the pursuit of a loose ball.
Said Jean-Paul of the scoring sensation Nohr and the athletic 6-foot-2 forward: “When your two Grade 10 stars are the first two to hit the floor, that really says a lot about how much they want to win.”
It was that, or something close, and exactitudes aren’t too essential because the meaning was loud and clear.
When your two top players aren’t afraid to do the dirty work that comes with success, then it carries a ripple effect through the entire roster.
Of course those actions spoke to a larger story of defence carrying the day for the No. 2-seeded ‘Cats who in the end, topped a rising, No. 5-seeded Argyle Pipers team out of North Vancouver by a 69-60 count.
A 15-2 third-quarter run sparked by the clutch shooting of Nohr, who finished with a game-high 38 points was one way to look at the fact that Brookswood will now face No. 1 Seaquam in Saturday’s TBI Super 16 championship final, tipping off at 4:45 p.m.
Or, if your Brookswood head coach Chrissy Nohr, you start with happens on defence and how that keys offence.
“I think our defensive stops is always a goal and our goal is to get three in a row and then hitting (a shot), three in a row hitting (a shot). From there it kind of took off.”
Although determined Argyle, led by the 21 points of Grade 11 guard Sadie Danks, kept fighting back, even scoring the final six points of the game to get their deficit under double-digits at the final horn.
Mariia Mayden, the Grade 10 forward who is doing too many good things not to pop up near the top of any team’s scouter, was marked as a priority but still scored 15 points in a losing cause.
Brookswood’s Vande Ven boarded and blocked in her usual style and also added 11 points. Hazel Phillips, the three-point shooting 5-foot-11 forward, added seven points before fouling out.
Oh, and about Nohr and Vande Ven hitting the floor to grab a loose ball?
“They have been in a lot of big games and they know what it takes to win and they have played for me for a long time, too so they know that if they don’t dive on the ground they are probably getting subbed out,” said Chrissy Nohr with a chuckle.
Seaquam and Brookswood have not faced each other over the first two weeks of the season, setting up the clash of No. 1 vs. No. 2 as game of the early year Saturday (4:45 p.m.) at the LEC.
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