Brother Rice edges De La Salle in Catholic League semifinal
Brother Rice is back — and in a place it’s not accustomed to visiting.
Xavier Thomas scored 15 points and Henry Garrity hit a couple of clutch baskets in the fourth quarter as the Warriors, playing their first basketball game after two weeks of COVID-19 quarantine, defeated host De La Salle Collegiate 58-56 in a Catholic League Bishop Division tournament semifinal Tuesday night.
Johnathan Blackwell, who had 14 points, made a pair of free throws with 26.3 seconds left for a 56-52 lead as the Warriors advanced to the championship game of the slimmed-down tournament.
“It’s a great, big win for the program in unusual circumstances, an unusual time,” said Garrity, who took a charge to help Brother Rice extend a DLS scoreless streak midway through the fourth quarter. “Our staff has done a great job of adapting to everything.”
Brother Rice will play U-D Jesuit at 7 p.m. Friday at Detroit Catholic Central in its first tournament final since 1999.
“It’ll be big for us,” Garrity said. “We were playing very well before we got quarantined. We’ll look to play as hard as we can, as well as we can.”
Garrity hit a baseline runner to cut the Pilots’ lead to 50-47, and then his triple with about three minutes left tied the game 52-52.
Linden Holder, who scored all of
De La Salle’s 10 points in the fourth quarter, made two free throws for a 52-49 lead, but the Pilots didn’t score again until Holder’s layin with 17 seconds left.
“It was a game of runs and they made the last run,” DLS coach Gjon Djokaj said. “I don’t think we played particularly well down the stretch.
“We got in our own way a few times, and let one mistake lead into another one. We didn’t move quickly enough on to the next play.
That’ll happen with a young team.”
Holder finished with 16 points. Caleb Reese had 15, Nino Smith 13 and Triston Nichols 10 for the Pilots.
Brother Rice practiced twice before taking on the Pilots, coach Rick Palmer said.
The team’s lack of activity showed early when a rash of turnovers helped the Pilots take leads of 9-1 and 15-6.
But a timeout seemed to help settle the Warriors — “I had to remind the guys that we’re the ones wearing black,” Palmer quipped — and the visitors steadily cut into the deficit.
Brother Rice took a 2928 lead on Blackwell’s basket with 1:12 left in the second quarter, and the margin stayed close the rest of the way.
“Two very well-coached, well-balanced teams got after it,” Djokaj said.
Orchard Lake St. Mary’s, Catholic Central, Loyola and Divine Child are not participating in the tournament.
That doesn’t matter to Palmer.
“There’s some that think in a COVID year the Catholic League tournament isn’t a big deal, but for us … we’re so excited,” he said.
U-D Jesuit advanced with a 78-46 victory over Ann Arbor Richard.