Hot Hand Luke leads Flyers
The Eden Flyers rose the shooting heroics of guard Luke Reinaerts to a 67-47 victory over the Greater Fort Erie Gryphons Friday night in the consolation finals of the 57th Standard High School Basketball Tournament.
The Grade 11 played scored 14 points in the first quarter and finished with a game-high 31 in his highest ever scoring performance on a high school court.
“I was feeling good and I was definitely mentally prepared and confident enough to shoot the basketball and play my best for my teammates” he said. “It comes from doing it over and over again.”
The 16-year-old, who hasn’t played travel basketball since Grade 4, credits his shooting touch to lots of practice by himself or with his friends at the gym at Redeemer Bible Church in Niagara Falls.
“My mom is the custodian and I go there and play by myself quite a lot for hours,” the six footer said.
He admits that once in a while he gets the urge to take basketball more seriously.
“I just haven’t totally committed to it,” he said.
One wonders how good he could become if he did.
“He is just an offensive dynamo,” Eden head coach Brian MacIssac said. “He can shoot, he can drive, he draws the double team, he is strong, he can score with players on him and he can hit the three.”
He is also driven.
“He’s a man of few words, but he’s very intense and you can see that on the course,” MacIssac said. “He’s very focused.”
The Gryphons trailed 21-11 after one quarter and never really got any closer as the Flyers built second and third quarter leads of 32-23 and 56-40.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit disappointed,” Greater Fort Erie head coach Dave Adamek said. “Maybe we were a little tired and had a little less energy and our pressure didn’t work nearly as well as yesterday, but they are a good team and they handle the ball well. They were the better team.”
Fort Erie didn’t shoot the ball well enough to win.
“We do rely on outside shooting quite a bit and when it’s not going in, you get 20-point losses,” Adamek said. “But it’s still early in the season and I like where we made it to over the week.
“If you looked at our offence Monday and compared to Thursday night at least, we have improved quite a bit in a few days.”
MacIssac was delighted with his team’s performance.
“I am really happy,” he said. “I thought we came out to start the game ready to go and got a nice lead right away. Luke Reinaerts was on fire to start the game.”
MacIssac would have loved his team to slow down a bit after it built its lead.
“We have to learn to do a better job of possessing the ball a little more and making better shot decisions, but we hit a lot of shots at the start of the game and were able to hold on.”
Eden gained revenge on Greater Fort Erie for its defeat in last year’s Standard consolation final, but that was the last thing on MacIssac’s mind.
“This is the only time we see them so we don’t really have any rivalry,” he said.
Even without any rivalry, Eden had its best performance of the tournament.
“From the second half of our quarter-final game, we really came together and we started pressing which got us more into the flow,” he said. “We have a lot of quickness and athleticism and we are looking forward to the rest of the season.”
STATS PACK
Kully’s/No Limit Performance Players of the Game: Eden’s Luke Reinaerts with 31 points and Greater Fort Erie’s Micah Stewart with 12.
For the Eden Flyers: Reinaerts 31; Ashton Nieuwets 13; Charlie Edgar 11; Peter Pilling 5; Trent Thorpe 4; John Tolentino 2; Carter McMaster 1.
For the Greater Fort Erie Gryphons: Stewart 12; Austin Ladouceur 9; Ethan Vanatter 8; Avery Parker 6; Donovan Morgan 5; Zack Tyrlell 5; Greg Keating 2.
