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Already being touted as one of the best teams ever in the long and storied history of B.C. high school basketball, the Kelowna Owls didn’t do anything to dispel the conjecture on the weekend in Port Coquitlam.
In fact, without one of their key players (6-foot-9 Grant Shephard) far from 100% due to illness, the Owls only affirmed the right to be mentioned in the same breath as some of the great teams in the past by dominating the opposition and winning the Legal Beagle tournament at Terry Fox Secondary.
It was the third straight tourney win against the best teams the province has to offer and the second time this season the Owls have made contenders look like pretenders in the championship game.
Unleashing an amazingly well-balanced attack, the No. 1 (Quad-A) Owls disposed of No. 2-ranked Oak Bay Bays 97-68 in the title game on Saturday. That came on the heels of a win at the Heritage Woods tournament in December in which they led by 35 points and won by 22 in the final over the Sir Winston Churchill Bulldogs, seeded second in the province at the time.
“Expectations were almost unrealistic,” admitted Owls assistant coach Brad Heuser. “But in the end, the guys lived up to the hype with another dominant performance.”
After disposing of No. 8 Kitsilano Blue Demons (113-57) and the No. 10 W.J. Mouat Hawks of Abbotsford (92-79), the Owls stepped it up yet another notch early on against the 11-2 Bays of Victoria in the first-ever Legal Beagle final that didn’t involve a Lower Mainland team.
Sparked by second-team all-star Davide Ciancio’s 6-for-9 shooting that led to a 22-point game, the Owls sprinted to a 29-16 first-quarter lead against the Bays, and extended the lead to 57-28 by the half.
“It was probably the team’s best half of basketball this season,” surmised Heuser, who has watched the Owls go 15-2 overall and 13-0 in games against B.C./Alberta teams.
The Owls extended the lead in the third quarter to 77-39 in the third quarter, so the outcome was never in doubt.
Grade 11 Mason Bourcier, a first-team all-star, added 18 points to Ciancio’s 22, while Nav Sandhu (second all-star team) finished with 17. Tournament MVP, Matt Lafontaine, added 13, with Parker Simson and Colin McGrath also reaching double digits for good measure with 11 and 10 points respectively.
Lafontaine, impressed as much as anyone at the way his team has been dominating B.C. teams, said he was surprised at being selected the MVP.
“I really didn’t think I had my best tournament, although I thought my defence was better than it has been lately,” said the Grade 12 guard, who is still weighing several options for post-second basketball. “And the way Davide and Mason played all weekend, they could have easily been given the award. With all the depth we have, it must be really tough for those choosing the awards. In most of the games, the top players on other teams are scoring more than 30 points, while we’re usually in the 18- to 20-point range.”
Winning by lopsided scores and breezing through to tournament titles doesn’t get dull according to the 17-year-old, although one wouldn’t get that idea after watching the team walk off the floor and offer only some half-hearted high-fives to each other after the final buzzer on Saturday — as if they had just beaten up on an Okanagan team in a regular-season game.
“We were disappointed in the way we played in the last three or four minutes, so I guess that’s why we weren’t jumping up and down,” he noted. “We go into a tournament like this wanting to focus on doing all the little things right. And we didn’t do that late in the game.”
What Lafontaine did like most about the Owls’ performance was the way in which they moved the ball.
“We know all of us can hit the shots, and we have confidence in each other, so it feels good to be able to pass up a decent shot and give the ball to someone who has a great look at the basket. It really helps build the whole team aspect.”
Aware of the talk putting the Owls in the same category as some of the outstanding B.C. teams in the past —like the 1992 St. Michael's University Blue Devils led by Steve Nash, and the 1988 Richmond Colts — Lafontaine says he and his teammates haven’t talked about it as a group, but he and captain Parker Simson have acknowledged the observations.
“We think it’s kinda cool to be a part of that conversation — a bit surreal that we’re on the team they’re talking about. But we can’t let that get into our heads. We just want to continue to get better and do what we set out to do at the end of last season and at the start of this one — win a B.C. championship.”
The Owls are right back it on Thursday when they travel to Abbotsford for the highly regarded Snowball Classic that will include New York's Mt. Vernon High School, a team the Owls lost to by 30 points last year — without Shephard in the lineup.
“We’re all excited about the opportunity to play them again,” said Lafontaine. “But we know we can’t get too cocky. We’ll have to beat some good teams to get to the final.”
FREE THROWS: Kitsilano had a three-point lead on the Owls late in the first quarter of their first game in the Legal Beagle tournament, but KSS went on a 17-2 run early in the second to break the game wide open . . . Shephard, who missed a couple of days of school due to sickness and met the team in Port Coquitlam, matched Bourcier’s 22 points against Kits . . . Two games in one day proved a challenge for the Owls as they were unable to sustain the same energy and intensity levels against Mouat that they showed against the Blue Demons . . . Tired legs contributed to poor shooting (37.6 %), but they still prevailed . . . Mouat led 55-53 at one point in the third quarter, but again the Owls went on a big run (15-0) to take control . . . Simson and Bourcier both scored 18 points, while Lafontaine chipped in with 17 . . . Quote from Chris Franklin, head coach of Oak Bay, to Howard Tsumura of the Vancouver Province: “One of the things about Kelowna is that people begin to believe that it’s all going to go through Shephard. But they’ve got eight or nine really talented players who like to put it on the deck, like to create plays in transition and are ultra-aggressive kids.” . . . The Owls will be the favourites to repeat as Interior Savings Western Canada Basketball Tournament champions, despite the fact that three of the top 10 teams in B.C. and the No. 1 teams in Alberta and Manitoba will be in attendance for the 43rd edition Feb. 4-6 . . . No. 3 Sir Winston Churchill Bulldogs of Vancouver will be joined by the No. 4 Walnut Grove Gators of Langley, Kitsilano Blue Demons (No. 8), the Handsworth Royals of North Vancouver and the unranked Prince George Polars of Prince George . . . The No. 1 Harry Ainlay Titans of Edmonton will travel west along with the John Taylor Collegiate Pipers of Winnipeg (No. 1) . . . The Owls will play their first game on Feb. 4 against Handsworth, with the winner moving on to the semifinal against either Harry Ainlay or Kitsilano.
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