Tigers take title
The Ridley College Tigers Prep Boys basketball team arrived at the top of the mountain a little earlier than expected.
The Tigers defeated Hodan Nalayeh Secondary School 65-61 to capture the school’s first Ontario Scholastic Basketball Association (OSBA) championship over the weekend.
“It was a bit of a surprise,” Ridley coach Victor Raso said. “In my mind, there’s lots of work to be done still. It feels like it’s a year ahead of schedule.”
The Tigers were the most inexperienced club in the 10-team OSBA, but Raso said the team quickly jelled.
“It’s a good team which developed and has learned how to win and improved since last year,” he said. “We are by far the youngest team of all the of the top teams in the league. We only have one graduating senior on our team. The majority of minutes on our team come from Grade 12s and Grade 11s who have one and two more years at Ridley.
“I kind of thought that next year would be the year where we had an opportunity to be one of the best teams in the country but the guys, they’re tough and they just learned how to win. It’s what we do all the time in practice. And then all of these games just kind of took over. I was pleasantly surprised. High school kids they shock you and it was actually so fun watching them like grow up in front of your eyes.”
Ridley defeated Bill Crothers Secondary School 92-75 in the quarter-finals, followed by an 89-77 win over Crestwood Preparatory College in the semifinals.
Raso said the Tigers felt like underdogs going into the tournament despite finishing first in their division with a 10-3 record.
“Two of our three losses were in overtime, and even then, people were telling us on the weekend it would be an upset if you guys win a game here,” Raso said. “We’ve beaten every team here, some of them multiple times by like 10-plus points. It was the preconceived notion that Ridley’s not that good at basketball, they’re not at the tier of the other top teams at the province.
“We talked about it as a group, we were just not going to get the recognition that we feel like we deserve unless we give them no choice but to recognize us. And the only way to do that is to win. I think it definitely is the beginning of Ridley basketball.”
Raso said the basketball played at the OSBA level is top-notch.
“It’s the best high school basketball in the country,” he said. “One of the teams that we beat, their best player is a 6-foot-8 point guard who’s going Division 1. And we have guys on our team who are going to end up at Division 1 schools who already have Division 1 offers. There’s only 10 teams in the province. And the best talent congregates at those teams. We’ve got players coming from everywhere to our school and so do the rest of the teams, so the level is very, very high.”
Following the tournament Raso was named OSBA Coach of the Year while Caleb Roberts (Class of 2026) was a first-team all star and Griffin Collinson (Class of 2025) and Quinten Ethier (Class of 2026) were third-team all-stars.
Raso was grateful for the award but is well aware it is more about the journey than the final destination.
“Years aren’t always going to go like this,” Raso said. “I tell these kids every day, it’s about the process, don’t be tied to your results, be tied to how you do things on a daily basis.
“This is just me taking my own medicine. It’s great, but especially at Ridley, this is not about me at all. This is 100 per cent about these guys and developing them.”
Members of the team are: Carter Ethier, CJ Roberts, Jaxen Baker, Julien Ligonde-LeClair, Demir Oztoprak, Griffin Collinson, Luka Jankovic, Daniel Mizener, Quinten Ethier, Griffin Macdonald, Caleb Roberts, Callum Smith.
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