Thorold, Smithville advance to consolation semifinals

It went down to the wire Tuesday night when the Holy Cross Raiders and Thorold Golden Eagles met in the consolation quarter-finals of the 61st Standard High School Boys Basketball Tournament at Governor Simcoe.

The Golden Eagles led 61-54 with 1:30 left in the game before the Raiders cut the lead to 61-59 with 1:11 left on the clock. Holy Cross had the ball coming out of a timeout with 9.8 seconds left in the game but couldn’t manage to score the tying basket. The game ended with a Holy Cross turnover on an inbounds play with 1.1 seconds left in the game.

It was a nice bounce-back victory for the seventh-seeded Golden Eagles, who opened the tourney Monday with a 49-38 defeat at the hands of the 10th-seeded Greater Fort Erie Gryphons.

“Tonight they were playing a little bit more like we are aiming to play like with that super-high intensity defence and a lot of positivity on the bench,” Thorold coach Marc Dupont said. “Hats off to Holy Cross. I think we had a little bit of a deeper bench and we tried to grind those guys down but they stuck in the game the whole time. We couldn’t shake them and they deserve a lot of credit for playing as hard as they did. I’m very proud of my boys because they worked really hard to get to this tournament and for them come around and get that win, I am very happy for them.”

Dupont’s strategy for wearing down the Raiders was making five-player substitutions for most of the game.

“It’s not common but we have a lot of kids that don’t play a lot of outside ball but love the game of basketball and it is really hard to ask them to come out and practise as often and as hard as we do and not give them time,” he said. “We go all hands in and everybody plays every game. We might shorten the bench and play situational but all the guys are appreciative that they come out and practise and work hard and they get to get in the game as well. I love it because there’s much more buy-in on the bench and you can hear the guys. They are like a cheerleading group on their own. I love doing this and I think this is something that will be permanent at Thorold.”

Holy Cross leaves the tournament losses with tough, two-point losses to the second-seeded Governor Simcoe Redcoats and seventh-seeded Thorold but head coach Austin Anderson wasn’t seeing any silver linings.

“Obviously as a 15 seed your expectations are probably lower than if you were a higher seed but I just don’t know how to take a two-point loss as a coach and as a team,” he said. ‘It’s almost demoralizing to lose to close games like that. You don’t have the what ifs if you lose by 20 or 30 and there was a lot of what ifs in these two games.”

Those what ifs centered on three things.

“There was a lot of unforced turnovers, a lot of rebounding errors and probably some coaching errors with timeout usage on my part as well,” Anderson said. “There are a lot of things to clean up overall.”

There are positives the Raiders can take from the tournament.

“There is a good foundation to build on overall,” Anderson said.

STATS PACK

Golden Eagles 61 Raiders 59

Cat’s Caboose Players of the game: Thorold’s Armann Sandhu and Holy Cross’ Matteo D’Aria.

For the Thorold Golden Eagles: Armann Sandhu 12; Miller Miotto 9; Mujeeb Aruna 8; Tayte Fraser 7; Tyrel Walters 6; Israel Anuku 4; Tyrese Gibson 3; Venstone Denave 3; Spencer Fluellon 3; Austin Miller 2; Abdurrhman Khalid 2; Teni Olajumoke 2.

For the Holy Cross Raiders: Matteo D’Aria 20; Vinny Gallicchio 12; Joseph Young 10; Anthony DiMaurizio 6; Terrell Wallace 5; Hunter Herring-Dent 3; Joseph Martinelli 2; Dereon Myles 1.

STORM 54 COUGARS 47

The Smithville Christian Storm advanced to the consolation semifinals of the 61st Standard High School Boys Basketball Tournament Tuesday at West Niagara with a 54-47 victory over the Centennial Cougars.

Scoring for Smithville were: Logan Higginson 20; Christopher Nyakabasa 20; Daniel Attia 10; Bo Langendoen 2; and, Derrick Posthumus 2.

Replying for the Cougars were: Marco Reyes 28; Nate Perna 7; Jesse Opufo 5; Kelson Stayzer 3; Braden Kroker 2; Jalen Davis 2; Brad Thomas 1; and, Callum Brown 1.

Cat’s Caboose Players of the Game were Nyakabasa for Smithville and Reyes for Centennial.