Cougars’ opponents live up to fearsome billing

Cardinal Carter Cougars basketball guard Ryan Raffoul knew that it had the potential to be a long game.

The Cougars, who played in the boys’ Tier II Division, had not seen the Lajeunesse Royals, who played up in the Tier I Division, but a little video told Raffoul all he needed to know.

“We haven’t seen them once,” the 18-year-old Raffoul said. “We watched a little tape. (It showed) they’re really good.”

Lajeunesse took a sevenpoint lead after the first quarter, stretched it to a 23-point lead at the half and never looked back on Sunday in taking the WECSSAA boys’ A basketball championship by an 87-36 count over the Cougars at the St. Denis Centre.

“We were confident in our team to win,” said Lajeunesse’s Andreas McBounds, who celebrated his 18th birthday with the win. “We’re just basically trying to do what we do in practice. Try to bring the energy, keep the energy and play defence.”

The Lajeunesse defence was smothering and the Cougars resorted to merely launching threepoint attempts.

“Our hope was to slow down the game, shorten the possessions and maybe get a chance to stay with them,” said the 18-year-old Raffoul, who led the Cougars with 16 points.

“Right from the start, they were just too fast. There was nothing inside. It was hard to get the ball in. Their defence was good.”

And on offence, the Royals had plenty of options with five different players finishing in double figures.

“Our coach has been saying that our main thing is defence,” McBounds said. “If you have good defence, it’ll translate into good offence and that’s what we did.”

Ahmed Abou Elhassan led the Cougars with 19 points, Ibrahim Abou Elhassan finished with 17 points, McBounds had 16 points and Gideon Mugenzi and Mark Spencer each had 10 points in the win.

“We were just trying to knock down our shots,” McBounds said. “In the first half, our (shooting) percentage wasn’t that good. In the second half, we knew we had to start driving and taking it to the hole and spread the ball around.”

Lajeunesse, which is hosting OFSAA next month, will now play for the SWOSSAA championship and a win there would open the door for the Cougars to play a challenge game to try get into the OFSAA tournament.

“That’s what we’re hoping for,” Raffoul said.