There’s no place like home for the St. Thomas More senior girls Knights basketball team.
A central point of their tourney tour, which covers seven different locales (including one in Mission two weeks ago) before the February playoffs, their own STM Chancellor event is where they get to shine before a cheering home crowd. And shine they did, pushing it all the way to the final before injuries, fatigue and a tough opponent took their toll.
The New Westminster Hyacks captured the tourney title 69-52, beating the Knights with a strong second-half push and a balanced attack. Minus a couple of starters from the game, STM did well to stay within shooting range until midway through the fourth quarter.
As an overall experience, the Chancellor was a big success, noted STM co-coach Jen Farano.
“It was a great final right from the start but we just ran out of gas,” said Farano. “New West is a very strong team and we did well to keep up with them for 20 minutes.”
The Knights actually led at halftime 35-33, having erased a six-point deficit with a seven-point run to start the second quarter. In the second half, the Hyacks started hitting buckets in pairs to reclaim control, with their defence limiting STM to five points in the third quarter. Even then, only five points separated the two teams before New West ended the frame with a trey.
New West closed it out by outscoring the home team 21-12 in the final frame.
The team’s top scorers were Emma Stewart-Barnett, with 28 points, and Brooklyn Monks with eight. New West’s Devin Strome tallied 19 points, while Sarah Forgie chipped in 16, all in the first half, before fouling out.
To advance to the final, STM bested Terry Fox 55-54 in a thriller on Friday, where the hosts saw a 19-point lead erased through a determined rally by the Ravens. Up 36-17 at halftime, the Knights needed a last-minute bucket to collect the one-point win, and a berth to the final.
“We had the resilience to come back and refused to lose. ... We could have given up but they wouldn’t.”
The final quarter was a swap of buckets, with Monks dealing a trey to give STM a two-point edge, only to see Fox’s Jenevieve Patry-Smith match that with a three-pointer to make it 54-53. But the Knights hit one more shot to take the win. Stewart-Barnett counted 19 points, while Aurafel Domingo notched 10 points.
STM opened the tourney by topping Steveston-London 76-26 before a loud, cheering school crowd.
Shiloh Corrales Nelson and Nicole Torozan led a balanced attack with 12 points apiece. Corrales Nelson, who scored all her points in the fourth quarter, missed the rest of the tourney with an injury.
With Corrales Nelson and Domingo lost during the weekend to injury, other players moved into key roles and led the procession, said Farano, who shares the coaching duties with Joe Thiessen and Dave Kazun.
“(Grade 12 captain) Julia Spagnuolo was playing in her first tournament (after volleyball provincials) and stepped in and up for us. She moved into the post position and she had to do a lot of the dirty work and take care of the boards for us,” she added.
The team heads to Vernon this weekend for another tourney test, where they line up against the likes of No. 2-ranked Vernon and No. 8 Okanagan-Mission.
STM most recently was listed seventh in provincial AA hoop ranking.
