It was a roller-coaster week of emotions for the Cambie Crusaders at the Lower Mainland AA Boys Basketball Championships.
The bottom line is they are heading back to the provincial tournament for the second straight year. They just wish it was as defending Lower Mainland champions.
Cambie came ever-so-close to repeating the feat, falling 70-67 to St Pats in an electric atmosphere at the Olympic Oval on Thursday night.
Both schools were out in full force to take in this game — with boisterous supporters cramming around the secondary court at the championships. School spirit is indeed live at well at Cambie and savouring arguably the best stretch for senior boys basketball since the school converted to Grades 8-12 two decades ago.
It was just before tip-off the Crusaders learned their trip to the Langley Events Centre in two weeks was secured. King George’s win over RC Palmer insured Cambie would get no worse than the Lower Mainland No. 2 berth. Still, they weren’t interested in heading to the provincials through the backdoor.
With numerous lead changes throughout the night, the Crusaders just couldn’t protect the basketball when they really needed to against St. Pats’ relentless pressure defence. The Vancouver private school finally seized the lead for good in the last two minutes.
"Give them credit. They are a feisty team,” said Cambie head coach Chris Mattu “It was a weird game. No one really took control of it. Call here and call there (made a difference) and we just didn’t take care of the ball. Turnovers really hurt us. Limit those and I think it would be a different story.”
It was also a lesson learned for a young Crusaders team with just two starting Grade 12s — Riley Paulik and Tarn Dhaliwal. Both were named to the all-star team, while only a Cambie win prevented Paulik from earning the MVP award. He was outstanding in the final.
The Crusaders advanced to the championship game with a big 73-63 over No. 1 seed King George. They raced out to a 20-point first half lead and did a terrific job defensively on Dragons’ Grade 11 standout Yoel Teclehaimanot.
“They are a great team and were No. 1 for a reason,” added Mattu. “They brought the lead down to seven but we managed to put the game away.
“We came in here as the fourth seed and no one expected us to beat King George. Our boys competed and we believed. Now it’s time to make some noise at provincials.”
