Article By: Rob Massey
GUELPH — Well, that was easy.
The Lourdes Crusaders, fresh off their District 10 senior boys’ basketball championship win Friday, crushed the Simcoe Composite Sabres 65-21 Tuesday to gain a berth in the CWOSSA AA championship tournament Friday at Bishop Macdonell. The Crusaders are the defending CWOSSA AA champions.
“We were hoping that it was going to be more of a formality coming in,” Lourdes coach Scott Robinson said.
“We had basically a couple of goals in mind. One was that nobody gets injured and No. 2 was to maybe get some of the guys who hadn’t played a lot through the playoffs some extended minutes. You never know going into the CWOSSA tournament and hopefully into OFSAA when you’re going to need some of those guys.”
Lourdes achieved both of its goals, getting the game against the Sabres under control in the first half and that allowed the Crusaders to go to the end of the bench to get all players in the game.
“It was a good preparation goal for us,” Robinson said.
The Crusaders received points from 12 of their 16 players. Sharieff Peru led with 15 points while Maximillian Raab had 11, Liam O’Regan and Mike Finoro eight apiece, Kevin Roche six, Ben King five, Chris Watson four, Evan McLaughlin, Jordan Trimble, Ryan Bilodeau and Taylor Fraser two apiece and Stephen Gade one.
The usual top five or six on the Lourdes lineup spent more time on the bench than normal, as can be seen by the number of Crusaders who scored.
“It’s nice seeing all the players improve,” Peru said. “The guys, the Grade 11s, they’ve improved so much since the beginning of the season and it’s nice to see the players grow.”
Three of Simcoe’s eight players scored. Tommy Tran and Brandon Lowery had nine points apiece while Kevin Alemang had three.
Lourdes ran to a 21-8 lead by the end of the first quarter, then stretched the gap by nine in the opening minute of the second quarter. By halftime, the Crusaders were ahead 44-8. They were up 58-13 at the end of the third quarter.
One concern the Crusaders might have heading into the CWOSSA tournament is getting serious again. After playing an intense full-court pressure game in the first quarter Tuesday, Lourdes backed off a little. In the third quarter, the last quarter any of the starters had any significant playing time, many were playing with huge smiles on their faces and that’s not the norm.
“I don’t like to see that because we’re not a team that likes to really showboat or run up the score,” Robinson said. “We’ve still got to shoot. We’ve still got to take shots and play defence, but that’s why in the second half we played most of our bench. I didn’t want to go out and embarrass another team, we already had the win in hand by halftime.”
“We go into every game expecting the best opponents,” Peru said. “That’s the best preparation because if you go into a game underestimating an opponent, you’re in for potentially an upset. That’s something we’ve changed from last year. Every single game, no matter the opponent, we attack, attack, attack until the game is done.”
Lourdes is to play its CWOSSA semifinal at 2:30 p.m. Friday. The final is set for 7 p.m.
The Centre Dufferin Royals of Shelburne defeated the St. James Lions in a CWOSSA senior AAA qualifier Tuesday. The Lions will get another shot at qualifying Wednesday when they play West Hill at Owen Sound.
In junior qualifiers Tuesday, Lourdes advanced in AA by dropping Simcoe Composite and St. James moved on in AAA by defeating Centre Dufferin.
While the AA tournament is at Bishop Mac Friday, both the AAA and AAAA tournaments are two-day affairs starting Friday and wrapping up Saturday. The AAA tournament is at Brantford North Park while the AAAA tournament is at Ross. The Centre Wellington Falcons and Ross Royals are in the AAAA tournament in both senior and junior.
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