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Lower Mainland 2014 hoop finals: The College, Tupper’s Tigers each fight for zone crowns

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VANCOUVER — Veteran head coach Lloyd Scrubb can’t say for sure if he’s been a part of a basketball program that has had as drastic a mid-season turnaround as his current edition of the Vancouver College Fighting Irish.

At one stage losers of five straight, including a 23-point home court loss to Queen Charlotte, the No. 8-ranked Irish have shown an entirely different face over the past six weeks, morphing into B.C.’s hottest team just when it matters most.

Grade 12 standout guard Elijah Campbell-Axson scored 33 points en route to tourney MVP honours, and under-sized Grade 11 forward Chris McAlpine added 21 more Friday, as Vancouver College edged the No. 2-ranked Sir Winston Churchill Bulldogs 89-85 in the Lower Mainland Quad A championship final at the Richmond Olympic Oval.

“We are a young team,” understated Scrubb, whose roster includes just three seniors. “And we don’t have particularly big kids. It takes time to get used to playing at the senior level and to get used to a different kind of a coaching style. That’s why we took our lumps at the beginning.”

Since losing to Burnaby South for the second time in five days on Jan. 16, every team the Irish (18-11) has played over its final 12 has either been Top 10 or honourable mention in The Province’s Big 10 rankings. That there only loss over that span was an 82-74 setback to Terry Fox in the final of its own Emerald Invitational speaks volumes to how far the Irish have come.

On Friday, it was as much about platoon defence as anything.

Jordan Lum-Tong, Jack Coady and McAlpine, all standing around six feet tall, were tasked with the job of trying to stop a bigger, more dynamic group of athletes from Churchill, including star forward Mindy Minhas.

“The best you can do is to try and disrupt a team from what they do best,” continued Scrubb. “So we tried to make it hard for (Minhas) to get into his offence, and the way to do that was to limit the amount of times he had the ball in his hands. So you try that, then try to stop their other guys and you see what happens.”

No. 10 Burnaby South topped St. George’s of Vancouver 86-53 in the third-place game to earn the zone final berth to the B.C. championships, set to run March 12-15 in Langley.

In the Lower Mainland Triple A title game, also played at the Oval, Vancouver’s Sir Charles Tupper Tigers claimed its first zone title in school history.

No. 3 Tupper topped Burnaby’s No. 2-ranked St. Thomas More Knights 86-78 in the final, as guard Ron Ronquillo, the tournament MVP, was a perfect 7-for-7 from the field including three treys, and 12-of-13 shooting from the stripe.

On the whole, Tupper shot 69 per cent from distance.

“Their reach killed us all night long and they simply owned the back board at both ends,” said Tupper head coach Jeff Gourley. “If we didn’t shoot the way that we did, we would have been in deep trouble.”

Saurav Acharya had 19 points for the winners, and DJ Sugue another 16. STM’s Reese Morris scored 32 of his game-high 36 points in the second half.

In an all-Richmond battle for third and fourth, McNair topped McMath 84-79. They will join both Tupper and More as the Mainland’s four representatives at the B.C. championships.

SUNDAY ON LINE!!

Curious just who your school will open up against at both the Telus B.C. Quad A and Triple A senior boys basketball championships March 12-15? Zone competitions wrapped up around the B.C. on Saturday night and both draws will be produced Sunday morning by the B.C. High School Boys Basketball Association. The Province’s Howard Tsumura will provide live analysis of both draws as they are unveiled by host Chris Kennedy beginning at 1 p.m. Log on to langleyeventscentre.com for live coverage.



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