What an opening day of the OFSAA basketball championships!
Despite all 5 CWOSSA teams being seeded in the lower half of all draws, our teams went a respectable 2-3 in the opening round of action on Monday.
The most exciting of those games came up in Ottawa, where an Alex Thompson buzzer-beater gave #10 Kitchener St. Mary's (AAAA) their first OFSAA win in school history, a 60-59 thriller over #9 Hamilton Westmount.
Henry Bankazo was also solid down the stretch for the Eagles, with two key baskets while taking an important charge at around the 1:30 mark. The game actually saw three lead changes in the final 30 seconds of play; Westmount had taken the lead with about :15 on the clock.
Adam Voll led the way for the balanced Eagle attack with a 13-point effort.
St. Mary's will play #8 Ottawa St. Patrick's today at 1:00pm, with the winner of that game playing either #1 Vaughan or #3 Holy Trinity in one quarterfinal tonight. From a comparison standpoint, their D8 rivals Resurrection lost 68-53 to St. Patrick's in the consolation finals of the Ontario All-Catholic tournament, though it was a 6-point game at halftime and about 10 with 6:00 to go in the fourth before St. Pat's extended things late.
Meanwhile, Guelph's Our Lady of Lourdes HS was definitely not pleased about their #15 seeding at "AA" OFSAA, and decided to take things out on the competition by pulling a big first round upset, 54-45 over #4 ACMT of Hamilton.
As I noted on Twitter, ACMT is no slouch, having beaten the likes of Kitchener St. Mary's earlier this year.
Lourdes got the uptempo Jaguars playing their game, which certainly helped. Sharieff Peru also had a monumental effort for the Crusaders, pouring in 28 (over half) of their points. Mike Finoro added 10 as well.
So, instead of playing the #2 team today, Lourdes does themselves a favour and will now play #13 St. Michael's (Stratford). This is a team that has participated in several CWOSSA tournaments, such as the Knights-Vikes Classic (win over Hamilton SJAM, 20 point loss to WCI, 20 point win over Huron Heights) and the SBCSS Tournament (60-57 loss to Preston).
It goes without saying that if Lourdes plays like they did yesterday, they could certainly advance through to the quarterfinals. Tip time is 10:00am.
Meanwhile, back to AAAA, JF Ross put forth a valiant effort against #7 HB Beal of London, but the Raiders pulled away in the 4th to a 56-45 win. This one was close throughout, with Beal holding quarter leads of 4, 2 at half (31-29) and three after three quarters (38-35). Jack Cornett had 9 for the Royals there.
JF Ross is about to tip-off (9:45am) in an elimination game against #4 Pine Ridge of Pickering. They did defeat Pine Ridge a few weeks' back in an exhibition game, so they may be able to spring an upset. By the same token, they won't be an "unknown commodity" to the Panthers, either.
In "A", Walkerton DSS (#16) got 21 points from JD West but dropped their opener 50-38 to London District Christian (#6). The Raiders will take on the top-ranked E-S Algonquin in the "round of 16" this morning.
Finally, the Jacob Hespeler Hawks are out down at the "AAA" tournament, but not after a fine effort down in Windsor against the hometown (and #4 ranked) Herman Green Griffins.
The Hawks, who trailed 50-42 after three quarters, went on a 10-2 run to open the fourth quarter, keyed by a 5-point surge from star Jason Quiring and a free-throw from Brendan Vandyken to tie the game at 52 and around 5:30 to play.
However, the Hawks would go cold thereafter and Herman would reel off the next 14 points of the game before Hespeler hit a three with under :10 left in the game (66-55). Two more Herman free-throws would account for the final margin.
Jason Quiring finished with a double-double in that one (20 points, 11 rebounds), while Javon Bryce added 14.
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