Corsaro-Oteng leads Myer into Trib semifinals

Isaiah Corsaro-Oteng has been a revelation for the A.N. Myer Marauders senior boys basketball team.

“Before the season started, I hadn’t seen him play but he has been showing some promising talent this year,” Myer head coach Tyler Thomson said. “He can certainly shoot the ball when he is on and he has filled a big role on our team this year. He is our key scorer and is someone to look out for in the coming years.”

The Grade 11 guard came up big Thursday at Notre Dame in the championship quarterfinals of the 67th Annual Welland Tribune Basketball Tournament, netting a team-high 19 points to lead the Marauders to an impressive 62-42 triumph over the Denis Morris Reds. He is averaging 18 points a game through the first two games of the tournament.

Thomson feels that Corsaro-Oteng can become an even better player.

“I still think he’s a young developing player and he needs to work on his leadership a little more and be more of a verbal or nonverbal leader, he said. “Like any young guy, he needs to figure out what he can do on the court and focus on that.”

The 6-foot-2, 185-pound forward has been playing basketball since Grade 6 but didn’t start taking high school basketball seriously until last year.

“My goal is to just do more in general,” the 16-year-old said. “Last year I didn’t have much of a role.”

It has been a big change to go from that to a main scoring option with the Marauders.

“I did a lot of training in the gym and I got a lot of shots off with a bunch of players. I’ve put in the work and tried to be more confident with the ball.”

That confidence was evident early in the season.

“In my first couple of games, I was hitting a lot of threes and my confidence went up from there.”

Key to his scoring is a quick release.

“It was a lot of catch and shoot drills and trying to get the ball up quickly. Most of my shots are catch and shoot.”

Corsaro-Oteng is looking forward to the rest of the tournament.

“We will likely play against Notre Dame and we played them before and won by eight. They are missing some players and we will have to play even better than we played last time.”

The Reds ran into a buzzsaw Thursday as the Marauders built quarter leads of 22-9, 37-20 and 52-39.

“That was a tough one for us,” DM head coach Wade Pychel said. “We didn’t know how to handle their pressure well, they were tough on defence, they can ballhawk like crazy, they are good at taking away passing lanes and they were good at taking away our gaps to penetrate at the net and we didn’t have a lot of answers for them, especially in the first half. In the second half, we came out with a little bit of fire and that eventually fizzled. They were too hungry on defence.”

Myer also beat the Reds down the floor on offence leading to several easy baskets.

“We didn’t run in transition. I let them know before the game that they were going to run and if we didn’t get back they were going to burn us in transition,” he said. “That’s what good teams do. They run you, they tire you out and eventually they wear you down.”

It was a good learning experience for the Reds.

“We’ve got to work on our press break, taking care of the ball and more endurance,” Pychel said. “There will be a little bit more running in practice to make it happen in the coming weeks and we will refocus our energy on doing something positive when it comes to playing offence.”

Thomson was delighted with his team’s offence and its ability to beat Denis Morris down the floor.

“Those are two of the things we focus on practice; our transition offence and communication on defence. We run a unique system where we switch different guys on anybody really and we rely on communication,” he said. “It worked out pretty well today.”

STATS PACK

Marauders 62 Reds 42

Mountainview Building Group Players of the Game: Myer’s Isaiah Corsaro-Oteng and DM’s Joshua Kaufman.

For the A.N. Myer Marauders: Corsaro-Oteng 19; Louis Pullano 14; Noah Walters 13; Jayke Arnold 8; Tavish McMahon 8.

For the Denis Morris Reds: Kaufman 11; Demarco Perry 11; Nathan Sansaet 8; Travis Palmer 7; Benjamin Bartley 3; Sebastian Pena Puentes 2.