AA & AAA Senior CWOSSA Tournaments: Brief Previews

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 1^st place pool finishers play the 2^nd 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 2^nd 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