http://news.guelphmercury.com
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Article By: Rob Massey, Mercury Staff
GUELPH – Once they got over the championship-game jitters, the Ross Royals made the game their own.
“Worried? No. Frustrated? Yes,” said Ross head coach Bill Price of his team’s early seven-point deficit. “They came out and they got up, but we were just nervous. You could tell. We’ve got eight Grade 11s and some Grade 12s who were thinking that we’d been here a couple of times and hadn’t won. We just had to gather ourselves and say, ‘Look, keep going.’ ”
The Royals did keep going as they used their bench liberally to rally for a 69-59 victory over the Centennial Spartans in the District 10 high school senior boys’ basketball final Saturday night at the Mitchell Athletics Centre.
“We knew that our thing is that we’re deep so we started subbing guys,” Price said. “The message was the same – stick with the plan and they’ll drop, they’ll drop.”
They certainly dropped for Shamlo Saeed, the player of the game for Ross.
“It was all right,” he said after his 23-point game helped propel the Royals to the title win. “”I wanted it so bad, it was unreal.
“We wanted this one, it’s as simple as that. All year, everyone in this building thought they were going to win. They went 16-0, but we came in here and said ‘this is ours.’ We stuck together all year. We knew we were the best and we came out and proved it tonight.”
The loss was the first of the district season for the Spartans. They had won all 14 of their regular-season games and two playoff games to get to the final. The Royals had gone 10-4 in the regular season.
“It is what it is, but it always hurts to lose,” Centennial coach Ron Conroy said. “I was proud of the way our guys played. They played strong right to the end, but Ross played great. You have to give them credit. They shot the ball really well and they deserved to win.”
Ross hit 47.3 per cent of its field-goal attempts in the game, including 55.6 per cent in the second half. At the other end of the court, Centennial shot 33.3 per cent for the game and 29.6 per cent in the second half.
The result also ended Centennial’s three-year reign as senior champions. However, the Spartans have won eight of the last 10 district championships. Ross has won the other two, their previous title win being in 2006. The St. James Lions, with their fourth championship win in a row in 2000, are the only others to capture the crown since the turn of the century.
Centennial led Saturday’s final 14-7 at the end of the first quarter, but back-to-back three-pointers early in the second quarter keyed a 13-2 run by the Royals that helped push them to a 29-23 lead at the intermission. After sinking three baskets on fast breaks in the opening minute of the second half, Ross extended its lead to 55-36 by the end of the third quarter.
Saeed’s 23 points was the team-high for the Royals as he hit half of his 14 field-goal attempts and all nine of his free throws. He also grabbed a team-high seven rebounds and had two steals.
Wil De Groot had 13 points for Ross while Jack Cornett added 11 and Ryan Cook had 10. Brad Crnkovic followed with five while Joel Mohr and Trey Larue had four apiece and Blake Linthwaite had one.
Jay Francis was player of the game for Centennial. He hit for 23 points and had eight rebounds while Rob House had 12 points and 11 rebounds. Serge Khayipangi and Adrian Varilla added seven points apiece while Shawn Mason had five and Andrew Ellis netted three.
Both teams advance to next week’s CWOSSA AAAA championship tournament at Waterloo.
“This is a huge boost,” Saeed said. “We’ve played the big teams up there and we hung in there so maybe we’ll bring another plaque down here.”
The night wasn’t one that will go down in Centennial basketball lore as the Spartans were dropped 66-39 by the defending champion Bishop Macdonell Celtics in the junior final that opened the championship doubleheader.
“It’s been a magical season for the kids,” Bishop Mac head coach Gabriel Frank said. “We had a great group of kids, a very inspired group. The group consisted primarily of Grade 9s, so it was excellent that they had a chance to step up.”
The title win was born in Bishop Mac’s preparation for the season.
“We played a very tough schedule this year which helped prepare us for District 10 competition,” Frank said. “(We played) games in Toronto against some of the top teams in the province and out in Orillia we had another great tournament where we came back from 15 points down at halftime to win the tournament. Their confidence level’s been very high all year.”
The Spartans kept the District 10 final close for a quarter before Bishop Mac seemed to have most of their shots fall in the second quarter as they stretched a 15-10 lead at the end of the first quarter to a 33-14 advantage at the half. The Celtics killed off a lot of the third quarter by passing the ball around, but still upped their lead to 47-23 at the end of the third quarter.
Mitchell Wood led Bishop Mac with 15 points while Michael Cloutier and their player of the game Ben Morris had 10 apiece. Zach Visentin netted seven with Alex Quintieri getting five, Dylan Hardiman and James Whiteside four each, Lucas Depieri three and Sean Young, Owen Brombal, Walt Olson and Victor Soti two each.
Aleks Kaludjerovic struck for 11 points for Centennial while Erik Sterne and Jeremy Seed had 10 each. Tarang Sharma and Thiviya Sithganesan collected three apiece and Jeremy DiCarlo netted two.
Centennial advances to the CWOSSA AAAA tournament at Waterloo while Bishop Mac will have to win a qualifier Tuesday to get into the AA tournament at Walkerton.
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