No. 1 seeds aren't expected to break a sweat in the first round, but the North Peace Oscars made the Abbotsford Senior Panthers work for everything they got in their opener at AAA high school boys basketball provincials.
The top-seeded Panthers, fresh off a Fraser Valley championship, appeared to be in cruise control early in the third quarter at the Langley Events Centre. After building a 47-35 lead at halftime, they reeled off a 10-0 run to open the third quarter, pushing the lead to 22.
But the Fort St. John-based Oscars never quit – with hot-shooting guards Enrique Fajemisin and Logan Harder leading the way, the underdogs chopped the Abby advantage down to four, at 81-77 with less than three minutes left in the fourth quarter.
The Panthers steadied themselves, though. Chase Claypool swished a massive three-pointer to expand the lead to seven, and on the next possession, point guard Jamie Konrad penetrated into the key and flipped a sweet no-look pass to Jordan Goheen for a layup. Those buckets provided the final 86-77 margin.
"For us, it was a great game to come in and be able to experience this (provincials), which is the first time for this group of boys," Abby Senior coach Prentice Lenz said afterward. "And then to be able to have a really tough game the first go-around, I think it'll bode well for us."
The Panthers didn't shoot the ball particularly well – they hit just 39.1 per cent of their attempts from the field, and just 24.3 per cent of their tries from beyond the arc (9-for-37). But they made up for that by out-rebounding North Peace 63-41.
Player of the game Claypool (19 points, 11 rebounds) and Sirban Gill (19 points, 14 boards) both posted double-doubles for Abby Senior. Luke Tompkins scored 16 points, Konrad had eight points and eight assists, and Goheen notched nine points and 13 boards.
Harder (23 points, 5-for-9 from three) and Fajemisin (22 points) were terrific for North Peace.
Lenz noted that teams from the north like the Oscars come into provincials as unknown quantities.
"The northern teams play a lot of good Alberta teams, and then nobody else sees them," he said. "You come in not really knowing what to expect, other than they're going to be a group of kids that have played a lot of basketball. And they're usually big, strong kids who play hard – which they did.
"At this point, as long as you move on, it's a good thing."
The Panthers move on to the second round at 6:15 p.m. on Thursday at the LEC, where they face the winner of a first-round game between Wellington and McNair.