After blowing a 20-point lead, the senior boys Clan basketball team put together a push late in the fourth quarter to earn a 73-68 win over the Polars and with that a trip to the high school provincial championships.
An important part of that comeback was the steady play of tournament MVP Amrit Sekhon.
“He will not lose, he will not give up,” coach of the boys Clan basketball team Dustin Clauson said.
“He’s progressed every year and has become an unbelievable leader.”
That leadership came through in the final quarter of the Championship game with the Clan trailing the Polars 61-54.
Sekhon brought his team to within one point with two three-point shots from behind the arc and that was enough to shift the momentum in favour of the Clan.
It took a few minutes, but the Clan eventually regained the lead with three minutes to go and from there they never looked back thanks to some solid defence and key buckets from both Sekhon and Ian Pepper.
“He’s an unbelievable athlete,” Clauson said of Pepper who fought his way into the paint for several buckets to help keep the Clan ahead of the Polars.
The win showed the grit of the Clan who watched the Polars go on a 27-point tear in the third quarter to take a 59-53 lead into the final frame.
The Polars used speed to outpace the Clan, catching the home team flat-footed with several fast breaks.
“They definitely picked up the pace,” Clauson said of the Polars game plan during the third quarter.
“They grinded it out and our shots weren’t falling for us.”
Clauson countered with substitutions, putting faster players on the court who got ahead of the Polars and denied the fast break as well as the easy turns around the corner for a drive to the basket.
“We just stayed ahead of them,” Clauson said.
“It was just a matter of time, they had their run and we were going to get our run.”
“This has happened every time we played them,” Sekhon said of previous games against the Polars.
“I knew we could turn it around.”
On the girls side, the result at the zone playoffs was not what Tracey Lust and her senior girls Clan basketball team were looking for, but she’s pleased with the effort her players put in through the season and playoffs.
“They never gave up,” Lust said of the Correlieu senior secondary school girls basketball team who finished the zone playoffs in third place.
“I was proud of the year they had and hope they consider playing in their post-secondary years.”
The Clan opened up the tournament with a tough loss against North Peace secondary school and ended the tournament with another loss to North Peace in the semi-finals.
“They [North Peace] are a great team,” Lust said.
The Clan did secure a win against South Peace secondary school.
In the 63-42 Jordan Lange-Smith contributed 19 points, Hillary McBride and Jordan Pawluk added 11 and nine points, respectively.
Lange-Smith and Pawluk were also named tournament all-stars.
Despite the two losses, Lust felt her team matched up well against North Peace and pointed to the ups and downs in both games to make her point.
Indeed, in both games, the teams traded the lead well into the fourth quarter, but that is when North Peace would slip ahead.
“Emotions became a negative contributing factor,” Lust said.
Also not helping, she admitted, was the loss of two of her top players with five minutes to go in the final quarter.
“That didn’t help,” she said.