3-peat performance for Phoenix
Saint Francis wins Standard Tournament for third year in a row; Eden takes B title
Sam Braithwaite added human punctuation mark to his roundball resume when the 57th Standard High School Boys Basketball Tournament wrapped up Friday night in St. Catharines.
On his last possession, in his last game, at his last Standard Tournament, the 6-foot-4 Saint Francis Phoenix guard rushed up the St. Catharines Collegiate court on a fast break.
After dunking the ball emphatically, the Grade 12 student held onto the rim for a split second, hanging in the air like an exclamation point.
An exclamation point punctuating two-time defending champion Saint Francis’s last basket in a 77-49 victory over the Blessed Trinity, and, for Braithwaite, an exclamation point punctuating his final appearance in his hometown tournament.
“I was looking for a dunk the whole game,” he said after being named to the first all-star team and selected as the most valuable player at the four-day, 16-team tournament.
“I just saw this opportunity, and I couldn’t let it go.”
Braithwaite, who will graduate next June and likely play basketball at Niagara College, will be leaving Phoenix with three Standard Tournament championships in as many years.
He said there are differences as well as similarities when asked to compare the three championship teams
“This year, we’re a lot younger,” Braithwaite said. “We similar as we have a lot of threats who can score, like Igor (M’Baya), Sacade (Kasamba), Nick (Hoggan).
“We have a bunch of scorers who can go off for 30, and that’s very deep.”
Graduates from the junior program at Saint Francis become key contributors on a team whose only returning starter from last year’s Standard Tournament championship team was Braithwaite.
“They’ve played really big,” Braithwaite said. “They don’t play like they’re Grade 10s, they play like they’ve played senior basketball for a while.”
Saint Francis came into the tournament as the No. 1 seed and was the hometown favourite when it took the court against Blessed Trinity from Grimsby in the gold medal game.
Braithwaite didn’t feel those expectations weighing down on his shoulders.
“It was pressure, but it was good pressure,” he said. “We don’t see seeds, we just see them trying to defeat us.”
“They don’t play like they’re Grade 10s, they play like they’ve played senior basketball for a while.” SAM BRAITHWAITE Standard High School Boys Basketball Tournament most valuable player
Saint Francis head coach Jon Marcheterre said, given its emphasis on youth, this year’s team is “ahead of the curve.”
“From our early workout, we weren’t quite sure what we would have here,” he said. “We knew there were all kinds of talent in this group.
“But could we piece it together, could we get the guys on the same page, looking at team ahead of the individual.
“This week really started to give us that glimmer that they’re starting to get it. They’re starting to understand that we accomplish a whole lot more when they’re looking for their teammates and not worrying about who’s getting the points.”
Indeed, the scoring was spread
out in the victory over the Thunder. Braithwaite led the Phoenix, and everyone on the court, with 23 points, but M’Baya was right behind, with 20.
Kasamba, 15; and Quinton Duemo, 11; reached double digits, and Hoggan was just a point shy, with nine on the night.
“None of them really care who’s getting the points, it’s who’s getting us the W,” Marcheterre said.
Blessed Trinity head coach Gabe Diadamo’s biggest takeaway from the Thunder’s 3-1 showing at the tournament?
“We’re as good as any team out there,” he said. “We can play with some of the best teams, we can compete with them and, hopefully, in the future, we’re going to win.”
To Diadamo, the final score wasn’t indicative of how well Blessed Trinity played against Saint Francis.
“The shots weren’t falling,” he said. “We missed a lot of easy buckets inside, we missed a few threes.
“If we make those, it’s a differ-
ent game. Overall, it was just the shots.”
Filip Gagacev, Noah Monteforte, 13 apiece; Lucas Cino, 7; Jimmy Hillyard, 6; topped the Thunder in scoring.
Flyers 67, Gryphons 47
Luke Reinaerts led all scorers with 31 points, his teammates Charlie Edgar and Ashton Nieuwets each added 11 to help Eden dethrone reigning champion Greater Fort Erie in the consolation final.
Eden, which won its second B title and first since 2011, rebounded from a qualifyinground loss to the E.L. Crossley Cyclone and won out by becoming more effective applying the press.
“The pressing is something we didn’t do on Monday,” Flyers head coach Brian MacIsaac said. “We tried the second half of Tuesday’s game, and it was very effective.
“I think it caused some troubles for them.”
MacIsaac was pleased his team’s progress throughout the tournament.
“You can definitely see improvement, and I’m very encouraged by that,” he said. “We still have some work to do, but I think we’re getting more comfortable with our offensive sets.”
Reinaerts, a Grade 11 student playing in his first Standard Tournament, called the win a team victory.
“I think we just played a lot better as a team rather than just separate people,” he said. “Now, we’re all just clicking better as a team.
“We’re working the ball better and passing the ball around better.”
Poor defence and poor shooting proved to be a double-whammy for Greater Fort Erie.
“Our defence wasn’t that good,” Gryphons head coach Dave Adamek said. “When we tried to apply the pressure, they burned us a few times and, on top of that, they’re hitting some shots.
“That’s what happens, if you’re not making shots, you lose by 20 points.”
The Gryphs, he said, remains a work in progress.
“It’s early in the year, our offence has little glitches that we need to work out.”
Top scorers for Greater Fort Erie Gryphons: Micah Stewart 14, Austin Ladouceur 9, Ethan Vanatter 8.