Article By: Rob MasseyGUELPH – Bishop Macdonell became the first school to sweep the District 10 boys’ basketball titles since 1999 when they took both the senior and junior crowns Saturday night at the Mitchell Athletics Centre.
The Celtics won the senior final 69-59 over the Centennial Spartans a couple of hours after Bishop Mac took the junior final 56-52 over the Lourdes Crusaders.
For the senior final, the Celtics avoided fading, something that occurred in both games of their regular-season split with the Spartans.
“Our guys learned from that,” Bishop Mac coach Marty Kendall said. “They realized that that’s not a good thing.”
“It’s the championship game, so we go hard for the whole thing,” Mitchell Wood said. He was Bishop Mac’s player of the game.
The Celtics also practised keeping their intensity throughout a game in the matches they played after the exam break.
“I think we rehearsed that and we got into their heads,” coach Kendall said. “We just challenged them. ‘How bad do you want this? If you want this, you have to play the whole game because if you don’t, Centennial is good enough to beat you.’ They’ve got great shooters and they find ways.”
Bishop Mac also paid close attention to Centennial’s top two shooters.
“I think it was all defence, that’s what it all came down to and we locked them down,” Wood said.
“We knew they had two good players, Erik Sterne and Tarang (Sharma). They’re their better players so we knew we had to lock them down and focus on them.”
The senior title win was the first for Bishop Mac since 1988 while the junior championship triumph was the fifth in six years for the Celtics.
Bishop Mac held quarter leads of 16-14, 29-26 and 43-42.
Jesse Kendall led the victors with 24 points while Wood followed with 20. Michael Ganson added 12.
Sterne connected for 25 points for Centennial while Sharma had 23 and Harnoor Samra collected eight. Sharma was player of the game for the Spartans.
Both teams advance to OFSAA qualifying (nee CWOSSA) tournaments next week. Bishop Mac goes on to the AA tournament at Lourdes Tuesday and Thursday while Centennial will be in the AAAA tournament at Ross Feb. 23 and 25.
The Celtics are not expecting an easy romp through their CWOSSA tournament.
“We are going to have a really tough time getting through CWOSSA this year,” coach Kendall said.
“Centre Dufferin is a AAA school that moved down to AA. They’ve got a bunch of fifth-year players that have played together and a couple of CIS candidates. They’ve already beat us this year at the Fergus tournament right at the beginning of the year. It’s not going to be a walk like CWOSSA normally is for us. We are going to have our hands full.”
The D10 junior final was a close affair throughout with neither team able to build a substantial lead.
“Lourdes has been tough for us all year long,” Bishop Mac coach Dennis Morris said. “They’ve been very close games -- we played them last week and we got them in overtime. The two teams are very evenly matched and it could’ve gone either way. We were just fortunate.”
Bishop Mac led 13-10 at the end of the first quarter, 26-20 at halftime and 56-52 after the third quarter.
“They were the hottest team in the playoffs, they won by the largest margins. They upset the No. 1 team, Centennial, I consider ourselves fortunate to have hung on and beaten them again. It could’ve gone either way.”
Lukas Wood hit for 28 points for Bishop Mac while Jake Chaput had 10 and Brandon Whiteside gathered nine.
Craig Valeriote had 13 for Lourdes while Alex Hudecki had 12, James Gerstenkorn 11 and Alex Hariton nine.
Both teams advance to the CWOSSA AA tournament. It starts Tuesday at Bishop Mac and wraps up Thursday at Lourdes.
“I don’t know much about the other teams. Lourdes is there so we’ll probably see Lourdes again,” Morris said. “We’ll just have to get ready for another close nail-biter and that’s what I expect.”
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