Hoops horsepower
Saint Michael Mustangs hold on to edge Greater Fort Erie Gryphons for Tribune tourney B title
Jomer Mateo can tell All-Pro NFL punters a thing or two about hang time.
Game-changing momentum from a three-pointer he scored with one second remaining in regulation to send the Saint Michael Mustangs into the consolation final at the Tribune Boys Basketball Tournament hung in the air for a long time.
Several hours, in fact.
Mateo’s game-winning shot in the Niagara Falls school’s 42-40 come-from-behind victory over the Eden Flyers was scored Saturday morning.
He was still sinking 3’s, and the Mustangs were still feeding off them, that night when they held on to defeat the Greater Fort Erie Gryphons 53-52 for the B title.
He netted 21 points, including 18 from beyond the 3-point arc, to lead all scorers as the Mustangs played in their first-ever final in the 63-year history of Ontario’s oldest high school tournament.
“Jomer Mateo had the best game of his senior career so far,” head coach Keith Bomberry said of the 5-foot-8 guard. “He’s instant offence.
“He can hit 3’s from about anywhere on this court, and he’s just tenacious on defence.
“He brings a lot to this team.” Greater Fort Erie, which captured the consolation final at the Standard High School Basketball Tournament last month in St. Catharines, got back in the game outscoring Saint Michael 17-2 in the final quarters.
Most of those points were scored against the Mustangs’ second string. Saint Michael starters didn’t return to the court until there was one minutes remaining in regulation.
Bomberry said giving younger players on the roster experience competing in must-win situations was one of the team’s goals heading into the tournament.
“These guys got to fight, they have to learn how to adapt to pressure situations,” he said. “Those were all (Grade) 11’s on up until the last minute.
“They did all right, but some the shots didn’t fall and Fort Erie was able to score near the end and they cut that lead.”
Asked whether the Mustangs observed a team ritual between games on Saturday’s final day of the tournament, Bomberry quipped: “I think we passed along our poor shooting (from the game against Eden) to Fort Erie for the first quarters.
“And then it came back to us.” Gryphons coach Dave Adamek was please with his team’s strong finish in the opening game of the championship doubleheader at Notre Dame in Welland.
“I’m very proud of how they made it a game at the end,” he said. “We feel if we had maybe another 30 seconds, a minute, you never know what can happen, but they showed a lot, they really did.
“Toward the end, we played good enough to win, but it’s just today we didn’t have enough defence.”
Greater Fort Erie also played the maximum of four games at the Standard Tournament taking the consolation title.
“We’re very happy about that, especially considering we have a young team,” Adamek said. “A lot of the time every day this week, we had three Grade 10s on the floor at one time, and we had a Grade 9 who played a lot of minutes with us this week.”
Adamek hoped the No. 1 lesson the Gryphons take from tournaments is that “we can compete with the bigger schools.”
He said other than the Grade 9 student, the other members of the team previously played at the former Fort Erie and Ridgeway-Crystal Beach secondary schools, both small schools.
“There’s that kind of stigma in their minds that, ‘These schools are bigger schools, we’re not supposed to compete with them.’
“Ideally, especially with these younger guys, I hope we created an expectation we should be playing Saturday.”
Dusan Krkljus contributed 17 points to the win, while Austin Ladouceur and Ethan VanNatter reached double digits in scoring for the Gryphons with 15 and 14, respectively.