Article By: Rob Massey
GUELPH — The Ross Royals ignored their school’s unbeaten curse Saturday night when they captured the District 10 senior boys’ basketball title.
The Royals had marched undefeated through the regular season, winning all 14 games, and then tacked on three more playoff wins, culminating with their championship-winning 65-45 victory over the Centennial Spartans at the Mitchell Athletics Centre.
“I don’t think there was a jinx or anything,” Ross head coach Bill Price said. “Some people have used that word.”
Undefeated boys’ teams at Ross this school year have had trouble with Centennial opponents in the playoffs.
The Royals had won all six of their regular-season football games, but lost to the Spartans in the semifinals, their playoff opener.
In senior volleyball, Ross had won all 14 of its regular-season matches and added two playoff victories before falling to Centennial in the final.
“The whole season, I never talked about (remaining undefeated). All I talked about was first place. Somebody brought it up today and that was the first time our team did. We emphasized our 30-6 (overall) record and we emphasized some of the losses we wanted back from some very good teams in Ontario,” Price said. “We talked about first place. If we had gotten a loss along the way, we would have. There were some close games, but we pulled it out each time — one game at a time. The 14-0, I think people lock into the 14 and they forget about one game, one game. That’s it.”
“We got that job done,” Ross co-captain Shamlo Saeed said of winning a championship after an unbeaten regular season. “The whole season, that wasn’t our focus, but it’s nice to put on the resumé.”
The win gave Ross back-to-back crowns as they had also defeated the Spartans for last year’s title. The title was the third for Ross in 11 years. Centennial won the other eight. The last time another school won the senior crown was 2000 when the St. James Lions hoisted the championship plaque.
While Ross had finished first in the eight-team league, the Spartans won their final three games to climb into third at 9-5. Then they disposed of the sixth-place Guelph CVI Green Gaels (3-11) and the second-place Lions (11-3) to gain their berth in the final.
Ross defeated the Orangeville Bears (1-13) and the Lourdes Crusaders (9-5) in their playoff run to the final.
Saturday, Centennial hung around for the first half before the Royals pulled away. Ross led 33-31 at the break, then tightened up its defence to try to account for Serge Kongolo Khayipangi, Centennial’s main offensive weapon after Cam Baker got in foul trouble early.
“They’re tough and they’ve worked very hard in the second half of the season to get better,” Price said of the Spartans. “The things they have, they use well. Serge killed us in the first half, killed us in the sense that he was their only major scorer.
“We did some stuff at halftime in changing up our defensive look for Serge. There were some things we did with him that seemed to pull us away. Defence has been our emphasis all year.”
“That first half, we weren’t getting anything done,” Saeed said. “I wasn’t getting any good looks at the basket. We had guys step up and shoot. I’ve had times when I’ve had to step up and bail them out, tonight they bailed me out. So it comes and goes, that’s the team.”
Mike Friesen led the Royals with 16 points — he hit four three-pointers — while Saeed added 14. Evan Karl and Jack Cornett netted nine apiece with eight going to Trey Larue, six to Wil de Grott, two to Ivan Alborov and one to Drew Padovan.
Kongolo Khayipangi had a game-high 23 points for Centennial while Andrew Ellis had six, Baker five, Erik Sterne four and Thiviyan Sithganesan two. No scorer was listed for the other five points.
Both teams advance to the CWOSSA AAAA championship tournament Friday at Kitchener Resurrection.
Junior Boys’ Basketball
The Bishop Macdonell Celtics ran up an early lead, then held on to edge the Ross Royals 58-51 in Saturday’s final.
“We’ve always been a second-half team all year,” Bishop Mac coach Shawn Belisle said. “I was confident going into half that because of our conditioning, we’d push them. But it went a little backwards on us this time. We had a great first half and not so good of a second half.”
The Celtics held a 20-point lead early in the second half before the Royals started to whittle away at it.
For the Celtics, the title win was their fourth in a row. Bishop Mac had finished in first after winning all 14 of their regular-season games for their third consecutive unbeaten season. They haven’t lost since falling 40-31 to St. James Jan. 17, 2008. Since then, Bishop Mac has won 54 consecutive games in District 10 regular-season or playoff action.
“We had a couple of close games late in the year and I was glad to have them,” Belisle said. “We actually had an overtime game last time we played Ross and it was good to see our boys play well under adversity. They answered the call late, just as they did in this game.”
Ross had finished in a three-way tie for second with Centre Wellington and St. James at 10-4.
Jesse Kendall led the Celtics with 13 points and was followed by Ben Morris with 12, Walt Olson 10, Sean Young seven, Owen Brombal and Adam Slater five each and Adam Morris and Lucas DePieri three each.
Nolan Ireland had 19 points for Ross while Kristian VandeKemp added 18. Alex Turvey contributed four while Jordan Hofstra and Vlad Vamanu chipped in with three each and Greg Schwan and Haroom Salimi had two each.
Both teams move on to CWOSSA tournaments Friday. Bishop Mac will host the AA tournament while Ross will compete in the AAAA tournament at Kitchener.
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