St. Paul’s Crusaders come through in the clutch
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/03/2018 (2202 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Ben Gardner tried to settle his mind as he stood at the free-throw line with 14.1 seconds remaining Monday night.
Gardner’s St. Paul’s Crusaders had a one-point lead over the Vincent Massey Trojans with a season hanging in balance during the varsity boys final at the Milk AAAA Provincial High School Basketball Championships.
What was he thinking?
“Don’t miss like I usually do, I guess,” said Gardner, a career 60 to 70 per cent free-throw shooter who calmly proceeded to make both shots to give the Crusaders a 72-69 lead. “I wasn’t really thinking about it, to be honest. Same as always: just breathe a deep breath, and two dribbles.”
Now trailing by three, Vincent Massey’s Jade Elias launched and missed a desperate three-pointer with two seconds left and the Crusaders regained possession, capturing their first provincial basketball crown since 2014 and the second in school history.
“Those were big,” said Crusaders head coach Jeff Laping. “Ben has had his ups and downs on the line all year and those were just, obviously, critical. We need to make those. I thought that if it was three(-point lead), we’d have a chance. If it was two, we knew they were going inside and we were probably going to overtime.”
It was a redemption for St. Paul’s, which lost last year’s provincial final to Oak Park. Point guard Mark Tachie, the tournament MVP, was outstanding in the clutch, dictating the pace of play and chipping in with some important second-half points.
“He’s exceptional,” said Laping. “He’s been wanting this since last year when we lost and in the fourth quarter, I just told him, ‘Mark, the ball’s got to be in your hands the rest of the game. We need you to make plays.’ And he made some great plays passing the ball, scoring the ball. He did everything for us.”
Tachie, a graduating senior, scored 18 points and added three assists and three rebounds. Gardner had 16 points.
“It’s great,” said Tachie. “Four years of hard work. We were here last year and we lost, so it feels good to be on the other end. It drove us the whole season. Our whole thing was to get back and complete the business this year.”
The Crusaders tried to stifle Trojans star post Kyler Filewich, who still managed to score 27 points and pull down 26 rebounds. Lucas Meyer and Donald Stewart had 15 points apiece.
“He was great,” said Massey head coach Nick Lother of Filewich. “It’s challenging, right? Because they go back to the zone and he’s dealing with three guys at the same time. It’s the only way they could handle him but he was still productive.”
Vincent Massey trailed 32-23 at halftime.
“We’ve come a long way,” said Lother. “Sometimes it’s tough in the moment. But a lot of these boys have learned a lot, that they can use moving forward in their lives. That’s reassuring. That’s comforting.”
HONOUR ROLL: Sisler’s Shawn Maranan, Garden City’s Troy Penner, Noah Dornn of St. Paul’s and Vincent Massey’s Kyler Filewich and Lucas Meyer were named to the tournament all-star squad.
— Sawatzky
Mike Sawatzky
Reporter
Mike has been working on the Free Press sports desk since 2003.