Anderson silences Marauders
Governor Simcoe coach Shaun Feor describes Redcoats guard Cal Anderson as a silent assassin.
“He leads by his play, he leads by example and today if we didn’t have him we would have been in big trouble,” Feor said, moments after the Redcoats defeated the A.N. Myer Marauders 66-54 Thursday in the championship quarter-finals of the 64th Annual Welland Tribune Basketball Tournament.
“He hit some big shots for us today.”
The six footer did exactly that against the Marauders, hitting five threes, including four in the second quarter, to help Simcoe build a lead that Myer couldn’t overcome.
“When they were coming back, I knew we just had to push the tempo like we did in the first half,” the 17-year-old said. “Other than that, the rims on this side were a little different and we had a lot more of our shots fall in the first half.”
The Grade 12 student kept the faith Thursday as a 20-point lead shrunk to almost nothing.
“We kept the lead so we were still confident,” he said.
Anderson takes Feor’s silent assassin comment as a nice compliment.
“I’n not very vocal on the court and I have to work on that, but I try and lead by example for the other guys.
“I try to be vocal every day with my teammates and hopefully it will get better.”
His demeanour doesn’t change away from basketball.
“I’m a pretty quiet guy,” he said.
And while he’s quiet, he knows that he is needed to speak his mind at times.
“I’m a senior so leadership has to be one of my main roles.”
Myer trailed 43-23 at the half but cut the lead to 45-41 at the end of the third quarter. They got as close as 52-50 with 4:03 left in the game before the Redcoats were able to right their ship.
“They were on fire and we couldn’t match their shooting,” Myer coach Paul Grummett said, of the first half. “We had to make adjustments but our guys were slow on rotation. They had the bounces in the first half and in the second half it was our bounces.”
Grummett knew things couldn’t stay as bad as they were in the first half.
“They hit nine threes in the first half and I told the guys that the bounces can’t keep bouncing their way,” he said. “We did battle back.”
Grummett told his team to take advantage of its size in the second half and it did just that.
“It finally showed and then we just had to get some stops.”
After building a 20-point lead, the last Feor expected to be doing late in the game Thursday was hanging on to a two-point lead.
“I’ve been in games before when we have been up by 30 and momentum is a funny thing. It can shift really quickly,” he said. “I thought we hit a couple of threes in the first half that probably shouldn’t have gone in and then it reversed in the second half and they were hot.”
It did produce some anxious moments for Feor.
“There was a little bit of nail biting and I’m not sure how many cuticles I have left now, but I trust the boys and they trust each other,” he said. “We’ve been in these situations before and I have a lot of trust in them.”
STATS PACK
Redcoats 66 Marauders 54
Mountainview Homes Players of the Game: Governor Simcoe’s Darren Johnston and A.N. Myer’s Adam Lamb.
For the Governor Simcoe Redcoats: Cal Anderson 15; Johnston 15; Mason MacEachern 10; Mitch McPherson 10; Andrew Scott 5.
For the A.N. Myer Marauders: Adam Lamb 19; Nick Murdaca 15; Cormac McMahon 10; Caleb Kim 5; Noah Sharp 3.
GRYPHONS 72 SPARTANS 62
The Greater Fort Erie Gryphons edged the Westlane Spartans by 10 points in a Trib tourney consolation quarter-final game Thursday at Notre Dame.
Ethan VanNatter paced Fort Erie with 31 points. Other scorers were: Avery Steinback-Parker (12), Austin Ladouceur (11), Zachary Tyrell (11), Micah Stewart (9) and Kiernan Connelly (2).
Scoring for the Westlane Spartans were Adam Adam (13), Waleed Al-Basha (11), Enrico Gibson (9), Tiankai Zhang (6), Aaron Nguyen (6) and Abdulkadir Sheikh-Ali (3).
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