The Handsworth Royals have crashed the party at the senior boys AAAA provincial basketball championships, scoring the biggest upset of the tournament to earn a spot in the semifinals.
No. 7 Handsworth topped the No. 2-ranked Centennial Centaurs 70-67 in a quarterfinal matchup Thursday, setting up a Friday night semifinal against No. 3 Kelowna. In the other semifinal No. 1 Burnaby South will play No. 4 Vancouver College. That leaves Handsworth as the only interloper sneaking into the top four, but the Royals, and their coach Randy Storey, have no doubt about their ability to play on the biggest stage against the best in B.C.
Storey was the coach back in the Handsworth heyday of the mid-2000s when the likes of Robert Sacré, who went on to play for the Los Angeles Lakers, former national team player Tyler Kepkay, and the late great Quinn Keast made the Royals a perennial provincial powerhouse.
“My experience allows me to kind of sit back and enjoy it and not get freaked out by it, because we’ve been here before,” said Storey. “The Tyler Kepkays and the Quinn Keasts allow us to have the confidence that we can do it again. That’s the message that we’ve been giving all year – we can do this.”
It didn’t really look like the Royals could do it at the start of their quarterfinal as they quickly fell behind the Centaurs 12-0.
“We were halfway through the quarter and we hadn’t scored a basket,” said Storey. “It felt like, ‘Wow, what are we going to do here? Are we going to come up with a clunker, are we ever going to score a basket?’”
Those doubts were quickly erased, however, as the Royals went on a run of their own and the score was soon tied 15-15. It remained close throughout the game, which turned into a classic contest of Centennial’s one superstar, dynamic 6-8 forward Dominic Parolin, versus Handsworth’s high-powered starting five.
Parolin certainly did a lot of damage, scoring 41 points with 16 rebounds – “He is just a beast,” said Storey – but the balanced big five for Handsworth won the day. Point guard Robert Lutman and forward George Horn are the team’s captains, while fellow Grade 12 wings Marko Stojsavljevic and Zack Watters pour in points from the outside. Rounding out the starting five is talented Grade 10 forward Matthys Van Bylandt, who hit a big three and a couple of free throws late in Thursday’s game to give the Royals the lead after the game was tied 65-65.
“Our five starters are all good basketball players,” said Storey. “We are a team that has balance and can get you in so many different ways. If it was a football team, we could beat you with the running game, we could beat you with the passing game.”
Thursday’s game still hung in the balance at the buzzer, however, as Centennial stole an inbounds pass with less than five seconds left and got up one final three-point shot that would have sent the game to overtime.
“It hit the rim and bounced off as the buzzer went, and then it was bedlam for a few minutes,” said Storey.
Tonight’s semifinal against Kelowna will be a completely different matchup. The Owls are coming off a 94-82 quarterfinal win over No. 11 Claremount.
“They play 10 guys, five in five out, and they just run after you all over the place and double team you,” said Storey. “[They] will try to force us into mistake after mistake – we may never run our offence because we’ll always be scrambling, but we’ve got the talent and the athleticism to deal with it, I think. It’s just, are we up to the challenge to battle? Their style versus our ability to handle their style, I think, will be the key part of the game.”
Storey and his Royals may be underdogs again according to the rankings, but they won’t be intimidated by the big moment.
“It’s wonderful to be playing on a Friday night in a big venue,” said Storey. “You just never know when these kind of golden moments will happen.”
Tip-off tonight is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Langley Events Centre.
