March Madness for local teams
Sydney Academy boys host basketball championship, Memorial girls head to New Glasgow
The top high school boys basketball teams in the province will battle for hoops supremacy at Sydney Academy gym for the Nova Scotia School Athletic Federation Division 1 championship starting Thursday.
“I’m just trying to treat it just like another game, but it’s kind of hard because it’s so big,” said Grade 12 guard Jaiden Davis, a co-captain on the host Sydney Academy Wildcats squad in his third and final year with the team. “We can’t over psyche ourselves.
“It could be my last time playing in this gym and just basketball in general for a team. It’s almost surreal honestly.”
The Wildcats finished with an unblemished record in the Cape Breton High School Basketball League this season at 11-0 for top spot in the league. They went on to sweep the best-of-three Highland Region championship series against the Riverview Royals. With the victory, the Wildcats won their seventh-straight Highland Region banner.
Sydney Academy enters the tournament as the No. 7 seed and will open play Thursday at 6 p.m. against the Dartmouth Spartans.
“We definitely have to handle the pressure,” said head coach Jonathan Penny. “The game — once you cross the causeway — gets a little more physical and once you get into metro with the five teams that qualify from there, their athletic ability and the pressure they put on and off the ball is really difficult. They make you uncomfortable all the time, so we’ve been working hard to be comfortable (being) uncomfortable.
“If we handle pressure and take good shots, we can play with anybody. If we take bad shots and turn the ball over, we’ll be in for a really long weekend.”
The Memorial Marauders will look to carry the momentum of an upset win into their NSSAF Division 1 girls championship tournament in New Glasgow starting Thursday.
The second-place Marauders (6-4) defeated the first-place Riverview Royals (7-1) to capture the Highland Region banner on Feb. 15 in Sydney Mines. Memorial has been paced by leading scorer Alisha McNeil, who averaged 14 points per game this season and fired a game-high 30 in the deciding game against the Royals. McNeil has committed to play for the Mount Saint Vincent Mystics in the fall.
The Marauders enter the tournament as the No. 6 seed and open play Thursday against the No. 3 Dartmouth Spartans.
“We’ve been focusing a lot on the defensive end of our game,” said Marauders head coach Loretta Tremblett. “I think it played a lot, especially against Riverview, right from the gates we were strong defensively against them in the playoffs.
“That was our main goal through the whole season was to focus on our defence and our offence would come.”
In other NSSAF championship tournaments starting Thursday, the SAERC Saints of Port Hawkesbury will compete at the Division 2 boys event in Windsor, N.S., while the Breton Education Centre Bears hit the court in Shelburne for the Division 2 girls tournament.
At the Division 3 tournaments, the Cabot Trailblazers will represent the Highland Region at the boys tournament in Halifax, while both the Baddeck Broncos and Cabot will compete at the girls championship in Pugwash.