The Cats come back
The groundhog made a second appearance Friday, in this one casting a long shadow over the local sports scene.
Try as it might, the renowned rodent just couldn’t predict another two quarters of cold shooting for the Welland Centennial Cougars, even when the defending champions at the Niagara Falls Review High School Basketball Tournament trailed 22-4 after the first quarter.
The Cougars, whose game plan is predicated on a well-balanced scoring attack that knows how to nail 3-pointers, proved the prediction right.
After trailing the St. Paul Patriots 31-19 at halftime, the Cats came back, all the way back to a 66-59 victory in an overtime thriller Friday night at Westlane Secondary School.
In the first half, cold shooting, like the common cold, was contagious infecting the entire Centennial lineup. Shots that bounced off the glass and clanged off the rim outnumbered field goals and 3’s, by a wide margin.
Head coach Phil Mosley said after the game didn’t say anything extraordinary to the Cougars at the break. He reminded his players what they could do, because they all had done it so many times before.
“We were shooting cold, and we were down, but we just said we’re going to stick to our game plan,” Mosley said. “We knew that our shots would eventually drop.
“They still didn’t go down as easily as I would have liked in the second half, although we did start to shoot a little bit better.”
Centennial, which lost to St. Francis in the final at the Standard Tournament and beat Notre Dame for the Tribune Tournament championship a little more than a month later, didn’t push the panic button in their third game in two days at the unofficial city championship for boys basketball in Niagara Falls.
“We just stayed with our game, and we believed in each other. That’s been sort of our motto all season long.”
The Patriots, who trailed by as many as nine points in regulation, forced a four-minute overtime when Victor Kariuki, their player of the game and a tournament allstar, went 2-for-2 from the freethrow line with 8.1 seconds left on the clock.
“We just made too many mistakes,” St. Paul head coach Frank Capretta said. “I’m sure they (Centennial) had a lot to do with some of the mistakes, but we just tried doing the same things over and over again.
“And sooner or later, we realized they didn’t work.”
Keenan Larmand, Nick Yioldassis, both Centennial; Richard Werner, St. Paul; and Dusan Krkljus, St. Michael; also were named to the allstar team.
Centennial’s Reese Radobenko was named the most valuable player at the eight-team tournament.
St. Michael defeated A.N. Myer 6050 in the third-place final.
Gryphons net B title
Day 2 of the Niagara Falls Review High School Boys Basketball Tournament is all about comebacks for teams on the consolation side of the bracket.
Qualifying-round losers have two chances to end the eight-team competition on a winning note, giving their programs something to build on heading into the playoffs less than two weeks from now.
At this year’s tournament the Greater Fort Erie Gryphons were the team that made the most of the opportunity. Niagara’s newest high school rebounded from an openinground loss to St. Michael by defeating Stamford 68-44 in the semifinals and host Westlane 56-29 to win the consolation championship.
Austin Ladouceur, selected his team’s player of the game after leading all scorers in the B final with 17 points, said the Gryphons returned to the court Friday morning knowing they needed to “pick some momentum.”
Rather than dwell solely on how rusty and out of sync they were in a 57-35 loss to St. Michael, they needed to build on positives from that game.
“We needed to be in the right mindset for the games today,” the 6-foot guard said.
He called the loss to the Mustangs a wake-up call.
“It definitely got us to check and see where we need to be.”
Ladouceur suggested playing two games in one day, while exhausting to some players, could be an advantage, with momentum from the first carrying over into the second.
“It definitely could be an advantage if you have a good first game.”
Once again, all 12 games in the 40th edition of the tournament were played at Westlane, but Spartans guard Daniyal Siddiqui didn’t feel extra pressure playing on his homecourt.
“Not really, because we have great fans right here,” the Grade 12 student said after competing in his second, and final, Review Tournament.
“We are disappointed that we lost, but I think overall we did have better defence.”
He was proud of the team’s work ethic.
“To us, we never want to get outworked by someone and I’m pretty sure we hustled,” Siddiqui said. “There were a few shots that weren’t falling for us.”
Niagara Christian defeated Stamford 58-51 in the seventh-place final.