St. Thomas More will enter the B.C. high school AAA boys' basketball championships as the seventh seed following a third-place finish at the Lower Mainland championships.
The Knights bounced back from a double-digit loss to McMath in the semifinals to beat McNair 65-58 in the third and fourth placement game at the Richmond Olympic Oval on Friday.
STM led by as many as 15 points in the first half, but trailed by a single point with four minutes left to play against the Richmond school.
"We go through these spells of lackluster play and being half asleep, and we're still working on getting the kids to buy in to the half court," said STM head coach Aaron Mitchell.
"We needed to wake up," said JJ DesLauriers, the Knights' second team tournament all-star. "I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves and we want to play too much out of our comfort zone."
Grade 10 forward Cam Morris, who led the Knights with 18 points, was named to the tournament first all-star team.
"At the end of the day, we just needed the win," Mitchell added.
The provincial AAA championships takes place at the Langley Events Centre from March 11 to 14.
JV Knights place sixth at hoop provincials
STM's junior varsity basketball team wound up in sixth place at the B.C. high school boys' championships in Langley.
The JV Knights went into the final quarter tied 28 points apiece with Terry Fox, but it was the Ravens who emerged with a 49-42 win at the LEC on Saturday.
After a slow and mostly unproductive first three quarters by both teams, Terry Fox started the final stanza with some added jump, racing off with an 11-4 start and never looking back.
Fox was led by Xavion Fleary, who scored all of his team-high 11 points in the second half.
"I knew the game was on the line, so I just played my hardest," said Fleary, the player of the game.
STM's Richard Galicia, a tournament second team all-star, led all scorers with 19 points.
Earlier, the Knights got by Fraser Heights and No. 9 MEI before getting bounced from the quarter-finals by top-ranked Kitsilano 55-50.
STM then defeated Rick Hansen to set up the fifth-place showdown with Fox.
"We ran out of gas a little bit," said STM coach Dominic Zimmermann. "Terry Fox is a very tough team. But I'm proud of these guys. We worked hard and surprised a lot of people."
Seventh-seeded Killarney pulled off an upset in the JV final, defeating Kits 64-55 in the championship final.
