Here’s a quick look at this weekend’s CWOSSA AA & AAA Senior
Championships, which are taking place in Cambridge (AAA), and Simcoe (AA).
All schedules and information are posted on the CWOSSA
website, cwossa.ca.
AAA Senior
Last Year’s Champ:
St. Benedict (DNQ)
Odds on Favourite:
Eastwood Collegiate (Kitchener)
Darkhorse: Centre
Wellington (Fergus)
The AAA Championship, taking place at St. Benedict, is a
6-team event with two pools of three teams.
Teams play a “round-robin” within their pools, and then cross-over
semifinals see 1st place pool finishers play the 2nd
place finisher in the opposite pool.
Pool “A” features WCSSAA Champions Eastwood, District 8
Champions St. Mary’s, and BAA representative Owen Sound. Pool “B” tabs D5 champs North Park, WCSSAA #2
Huron Heights, and D10 champions Centre Wellington (Fergus).
Interestingly enough, BAA was awarded an automatic berth
this year (no play-in game) much to the chagrin of many CWOSSA fans, who feel
that their inclusion will diminish the overall competitiveness of the
event. The BAA has one lone AAA team,
Owen Sound DSS, and the Wolves finished last in
the BAA North Division with a 1-3 record.
Their junior team (0-8) withdrew from CWOSSA participation, opening up an
extra berth for the largest district, WCSSAA (which will go to Cameron
Heights).
I wouldn’t be surprised if both St. Mary’s and Eastwood
flirted with triple-digits in their respective contests against Owen
Sound. Last year, Eastwood played Owen
Sound in a CWOSSA play-in game, and the Rebs rolled to a 97-32 victory – but let’s
remember that the Rebs are better this year than last, and Owen Sound is a bit
further down compared to a season ago.
As for the Eastwood-St. Mary’s pool game, it will tip-off
the tournament at 9am and should be the “game of the day”. Unfortunately for the Rebs, Kanayo Nnadi and Abdei Abdellahamad both suffered ankle injures in Wednesday’s WCSSAA final, and
the quick turnaround between that game and Friday’s CWOSSA opener may not be
enough time to see both at 100% -- definitely something to keep an eye on.
The other pool will see North Park (who have been among the
top CWOSSA teams all season) favoured to top the pool, with CWDHS and Huron
Heights likely battling for the 2nd semifinal spot – although both
have outstanding scorers (Kuel Thomas – HHSS & Cole Newton – CWDHS) who can
certainly help those teams pull off an upset against NPC.
Both the Falcons and Huskies have also steadily improved as
the season has progressed – of course, CW was without Cole Newton for the first
half of the season or so due to injury.
My picks:
Pool A: ECI 2-0, SMHS
1-1, OSDSS 0-2
Pool B: NPC 2-0,
CWDHS 1-1, HHSS 0-2
Semis: Eastwood over
Centre Wellington; St. Mary’s over North Park
Finals: Eastwood over
St. Mary’s
AA Senior
Last Year’s Champ:
St. James (Qualified)
Odds on Favourite: Glenview
Park (Cambridge)
Darkhorse: St. David
(Waterloo)
Instead of having to describe this 8-team, bracketed draw, I’ll
throw in a look at the bracket below:
The tournament is set-up so that teams from the “power
conferences” (primarily D10 & WCSSAA, now that they have some AA reps) won’t
face each other until the final if all goes to form – which isn’t always the
case.
That said, both Glenview Park and St. James (GPSS’ Eman
Otong and STJ’s Matt Sanvido are a couple top talents from those clubs to keep
an eye on) will be heavily favoured in their opening tilts. The most interesting game of the first round
will feature Centre Dufferin against St. David.
St. David is my tournament darkhorse – given that they ended their D8
season with a close 51-48 defeat to the eventual champion, Kitchener St. Mary’s. The
Lalor brothers have been doing some serious damage, with Tyreece having scored
40 points in their playoff opening win.
CDDHS is no slouch, and the Royals had the talent base this season to
participate in a couple of Brampton-area tournaments. This included a respectable 82-65 loss to the
#3 seed in the ROPSAA AAA Playoffs, David Suzuki, as well as wins over
Mississauga Loyola and Brampton Mayfield.
Mark Taylor has been putting up some serious 20+ (often 25+) efforts for
the Royals.
I have both of those teams getting through to the semifinals;
the rest of my picks are as follows:
Round 1
GPSS over Holy Trinity
St. James over Grey Highlands
St. David over CDDHS
Paris over St. Mary’s (OS)
Round 2 – QF’s
GPSS over Grey Highlands
St. James over Holy Trinity
St. David over St. Mary’s (OS)
CDDHS over Paris
Semis & Final
SF: GPSS over St.
David
SF: St. James over
CDDHS
Final: Glenview Park
over St. James
