Both Saints teams march into Final Four
The St. Clair Saints men's basketball team is headed to the OCAA Final Four for a third straight year while the women's team will return after a one-year absence.
The defending OCAA champs, the men advanced with a 110-95 win over the Centennial Colts in quarterfinal play on Saturday at the Sportsplex while the women scored an 87-53 win over the George Brown Huskies.
The St. Clair men trailed by six points in the second quarter, but closed with a 17-5 run to take a sixpoint lead at the half.
“We've got a lot of veteran players who, in the second quarter, decided to take over the game,” Saints co-head coach Brendon Seguin said. “A couple of the older guys really stepped up for us.”
Kennedy High School product Glynn Willis-paris came off the bench to score all 14 of his points in the first half. Tim Steward had 15 points off the bench and Galdo Tutu added 11 points.
The Saints opened up a 20-point advantage in the second half. Darnelle Peddie had 20 points to lead the Saints offence while Jesiah Deerr added 16 points and 12 rebounds, Chad Vincent-simon finished with 14 points and Andrew Loyuk added 13 points.
“We just knew we had to lock in on defence,” Peddie said. “(Centennial) is a very good offensive team, so we had the mindset that we had to handle defence first and the offence would come.”
The women's team opened a 16-point lead at halftime and extended it to 35 points after three quarters in cruising to the victory at the Sportsplex.
Kaitlyn Overeem finished with 34 points while freshman Chelsea Crep added 13 points off the bench. Ania Buklarewicz added 11 points while Shae-lyn Murphy and Janae Smith each chipped in with 10 points.
MILLINGHAUS LEADS EXPRESS
It was an impressive debut for new Windsor Express guard Shadell Millinghaus.
Acquired last week from the London Lighting for guard Chris Jones, Millinghaus scored a team-leading 22 points for the Express against his former team and added 12 assists to lead Windsor to a 95-94 Basketball Super League victory before a crowd of 1,953 at the WFCU Centre on Sunday.
Guard Latin Davis hit a layup, was fouled and hit the free throw to put the Express up for good with 63 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
Davis finished with 17 points for the Express (7-5) while Sam Muldrow added 12 points off the bench and Tyler Groce pulled down 16 rebounds and added eight points against the Lightning (10-6), who will host Windsor on Tuesday.
FLYERS IN SLUMP
The Leamington Flyers have lost three games in a row after Sunday's 4-3 double overtime defeat at home by the Oakville Blades in Ontario Junior Hockey League play.
The Flyers (34-12-5-2) watched a two-goal lead in the third period disappear against the Blades (2820-1-3).
Matthew Thomas, Chris O'flaherty and Marquise Brown scored for the Flyers.
ROCKETS DROP VIPERS
The Strathroy Rockets scored the game's final four goals to beat the Lasalle Vipers 6-2 on Saturday in Western Conference play in the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League.
After falling behind 2-0 to the third-place Rockets (31-11-3-2), the fourth-place Vipers (30-17-10) got goals from Nathan Games and Alec Stewart to tie the game, but could never take the lead.
73'S TOP ADMIRALS
The Essex 73's closed out regular-season play in the Bill Stobbs Division of the Provincial Junior Hockey League with a 6-2 road win over the Amherstburg Admirals on Saturday.
Karson Beuglet had a goal and three assists for the second-place 73's (35-4-1-2) with Jayden Seguin, Connor Mccracken, Luka Milosevic, Carter Dembinski and Nate Dowling adding goals.
Finn Russett and Cole Vaillancourt countered for the sixth-place
Admirals (10-32-0-0).
BADGERS OUST LANCERS
The Windsor Lancers fell 4-3 in double overtime on the road to the Brock Badgers on Saturday in OUA West Division semifinal play.
With it, the Badgers took the best-of-three series 2-0.
Mason Kohn, Jake Durham and Holden Wale scored goals for the Lancers, who got a stellar 65-save performance from goalie Nathan Torchia.