The Duchess Park Condors caught a thermal draft early on and by the time they landed, they could see their next challenge ahead at the provincial triple-A boys basketball tournament in Langley .
Their 109-47 win over the College Heights Cougars in Saturday’s North Central zone championship in Quesnel was never in doubt. Duchess Park used its fast-break offence and riveting defence to build a 25-15 after one quarter and were in control 43-26 at the half.
“I think everyone knew we were the favourites going in and we were just challenging ourselves for how good we could push ourselves to be,” said Condors head coach Jordan Yu. “We wanted to get everyone in and we know it’s important to build leads to do that and guys came out firing on all cylinders.”
Tournament MVP Cole Laing shot 26 points in the final, one point fewer than Condors post Evgeny Baukin. Both were exceptional in all three games the Condors played and Yu was told by tournament organizers they had a difficult time choosing their MVP.
“Cole was so steady and consistent and made all his takes to the hoop, tough finishes, and he was just dynamite, hitting his threes and setting up teammates, grabbing rebounds and pushing the tempo,” said Yu. “I can’t say enough about how good he was.
“Evgeny was also stellar. He was outright amazing, as usual. When you have a six-foot-six guy who knows how to play defence against a post or a guard, he was doing it all. We put him on some of the strongest scorers and he shut them down. With his length and his talent, he’s able to change so many shots, whether It’s inside or outside.”
Aidan Lewis contributed 21 points to the Condor cause and Adam Sieben shot 12. For College Heights, Bobby Kelly hit for 22 points and Guarav Bains, the tournament’s top defensive player, collected 12. Lewis, Baukin and Kelly and Deven Naumann of Lake City were picked for the first all-star team.
Ranked third in the province for the 16-team provincial championship in Langley, March 9-12, the Condors are defending silver medalists from 2020 and the players still left from that near-championship team know they’re going to have to step raise their level of intensity to an even higher plain to come back from tournament satisfied. Yu says he likes his team’s No.3 ranking just to avoid having the target on their backs like they did two years ago when they were ranked first going in.
“No one’s really seen each other this year,” said Yu. “We had that early December tournament when we didn’t have Chris Zimmerman (who was still playing volleyball with Duchess Park), so we were missing a big part of our starting lineup and we were competing with some of the top-10 quadruple-A teams down there.
“Everyone was playing their own games and that would have been the only chance those teams got to see us and then we didn’t travel again until we went to Kelowna to play Kelowna Secondary the first weekend of February.
“We knew what we needed to work on after playing a big school like that, and we’ve just been putting in work and our scores this weekend were unbelievable. We won every game this weekend by at least 60 points. There are only so many possessions in a game, so when a high school team scores consistently 100 points in a game, they’re doing something right.”
The Condors opened with a 103-41 win over the host Correlieu Coyotes, then doubled the Lake City Falcons of Williams Lake 122-62. Lake City went on to claim the bronze medal.
College Heights advanced to Saturday's final when they defeated Lake City 82-75, but the Cougars will not get a chance to play at provincials, with just one berth open to the North Central zone.
The zone-champion Condors roster also includes Jacob Hoskins, Chris Zimmerman, Ethan Rex, Peyton Briere, Euan Murray, Tobey Burbee, Theo Clarke and Gabriel Malfair. Joe Luong is the assistant coach.
