The Vanier Crusaders looked perfectly at home playing in away games to start Super Hoops in the Whitehorse high school senior basketball league.
The visiting Crusaders boys and girls teams topped the hosting Porter Creek Secondary Rams on Friday to start their Super Hoops season.
Vanier senior boys won 73-52 and the senior girls went 48-40 over the Rams.
“I like what I saw out there today,” said Crusader boys head coach Cody Hougen. “From Skagway (at the Don Hather Tournament) last weekend we knew what we had to work on. We practised, worked on some things and saw improvements in this game.”
After slipping behind in the first quarter, the Crusader boys caught up at 24-24 in the second. Vanier took a 29-25 lead on a three-pointer from Jon Marc Maynes and finished the half up by six on a jumper from captain Chris Carino.
Carino, who was named his team’s Player of the Game, led his team with 23 points while teammates RJ Siosan and Josh Tobias had 17 and 12 points respectively. All three players are on the Yukon men’s team heading to the Arctic Winter Games in March.
Porter Creek’s Kyle Lowes led the Rams with 18 points and Tristan Brown and Christian Ouimet each had 10.
The Rams beat the F.H. Collins Warriors 98-67 the previous night on Thursday with Lowes giving a 39-point performance.
There are “lots of things to fix,” said Rams head coach Logan Wedge.
“Yesterday our offence was great, our defence was weak. Today it was the other way around ... So it’s inconsistent.”
PC girls winless after two
Before dropping Friday’s game against Vanier, the Rams senior girls fell 42-34 to the Warriors on Thursday.
The Rams have just one Grade 12 player on the roster but plenty of determination, said head coach Trevor Hale.
“We’re definitely the underdog,” said Hale. “We have new players, we don’t have a lot of returning players from last year. The girls played hard, they hustled hard, and every game the scores are getting a little bit better.
“We probably don’t match up with other teams in terms of skill, but we sure match up with them in terms of tenacity and work ethic and all those kind of things. We’ll work on the skill and hopefully by the end of the year we’ll be getting close.”
The Crusaders finished the first half up 24-17 and held the lead until the final buzzer.
Crusaders captain Linsey Eby led the game in scoring with 20 points and was named her team’s Player of the Game. Teammate Kelly Mahoney finished with nine points.
“We have a lot of girls who haven’t played a lot of basketball,” said Crusaders head coach Sean McCarron. “I’ve got dancers, hockey players, volleyball players - a great group of girls. For now they’re learning. The key for now is not whether we win or lose, it’s how many turnovers we’re creating and if we’re in the right positions. These Super Hoops games are just directing us to where we go for the rest of the year.
“We came out with the win, but we can always play a little better the next day.”
Porter Creek’s Player of the Game, Davina Mcleod, led her team with 11 points and Emily Mervyn had eight on Friday.
F.H. Collins’ Samantha Burgis scored more than half her team’s points with 22 on Thursday.
Both nights of basketball were originally scheduled to take place at F.H. Collins Secondary, but electrical problems with F.H. Collins’ scoreboard led the two schools to exchange hosting dates.
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com