Coach Scott Walton barked out one last set of instructions to the Prince George Polars before they headed back on the court to try to mount a comeback against the North Peace Oscars.
Down 16 points to the visitors from Fort St. John in Saturday's Kelly Road senior boys basketball final, Walton told his troops, "We gotta win it ugly," and that's exactly what the Polars did.
First off, they switched to a zone defence, a formation they'd never before used in a game, to try to make life difficult for Logan Harder. The Oscars Grade 12 point guard shredded the Polars defence for 40 first-half points. That second-half adjustment worked for PGSS, but the game was very much in doubt until the dying seconds.
As good as Harder was in the first half, Polars point guard Tyrell Laing was at times superhuman in his efforts to bail out his teammates with athletic moves that opened up lanes to the hoop and rainbow shots from all over the court that were as good as gold.
With Laing and Inderpal Bassi finding the net with more regularity in the second half and Johnny Tatla doing his best impression of a much-taller character, hauling in rebounds and blocking shots, the Polars could not be stopped. They speared their second-straight tournament final win over North Peace in as many weekends, a thrilling 103-96 victory.
"We were down bigtime and we had to find a way to dig deep," said the 16-year-old Laing.
"They were hitting a lot of shots man-to-man on us and we had to switch things up. We switched to a zone to try to get the basketball out of [Harder's] hands because the kid couldn't miss. He had an incredible game and we had to slow him down."
With every clutch shot, with each fearless drive to the hoop that on more than one occasion sent him falling hard to the ground, Laing's ability to carry his team on shoulders overshadowed the lights-out shooting of Harder, who seemed able to hit from anywhere while collecting 55 points. Laing just kept getting better. All but five of his 34 points came in the second half.
"We hit a few big shots and got some energy and we finished the game on a strong note," Laing said. "We've been working hard in practice early mornings, late nights just to try to get better and it's paying off."
Laing, a Grade 11, is on Basketball B.C's radar as a member of the provincial under-17 team and showed why he's deserving of that honour.
"In 15 years of coaching he's easily the best kid I've ever coached," said Walton, who coached high school teams in Pitt Meadows and the Fraser Valley. "He's tough and he's determined. Tyrell is doing a great job of empowering everybody, so that when we need people to score other than him, they know how to score. I'm really proud of him."
Leading 58-42 at the half the Oscars knew they were going to have to dig deep to stave off the Polars, who reeled off six unanswered points to start the third quarter. Harder missed four of his first five shots in the second half, but that was only a temporary blip.
"He's been a handful both times we've played them, he hits stuff that other guys in our league don't hit," said Walton. "We junked it up with a 1-3-1 defence they'd never played before to try to influence their guard to one side of the floor and keep the action to that one side and not let them reverse, forcing them to basically play with a half-court. We're not a big team, so when the shot goes up, all five of us need to crash the boards and our strength is to get out and run."
Bassi started getting hot with his shots, Laing was making layups and sinking free throws, and with Tatla winning a majority of the loose-ball battles with North Peace big man Steven Smith, all of a sudden it was a three-point game. But the momentum switched when Tatla drew his fourth foul and had to take a seat on the bench with 6:30 left in the fourth quarter.
"Johnny is an animal, he's not big but he plays big and if wasn't for him the last two games there's no doubt, we wouldn't have come out on top," said Walton.
Without Tatla around, Harder tracked down couple rebounds and with Ezra Lainsbury running picks, Smith had more freedom to operate. All of a sudden, the North Peace lead was back up to 12 with four minutes left.
"We went into the locker room we just wanted to come back with more intensity and I'm glad our team did that," said Tatla. "We stopped them from shooting threes and hitting threes and stopped their big guys from rebounding and it helped us a lot."
The 12-point gap got Tatla fired up. He returned the game and drew a foul, then pulled off a steal that led to points, followed by a three-point swisher from Laing and the Polars had momentum. Another trey and a steal from Laing led to Bassi getting open outside the arc and he tied it 95-95 with 1:37 left.
Harder got fouled and hit one of his shots and the Oscars had a chance to add to their lead but Harder missed on a baseline attempt and Bassi went the other way for a layup that put the Polars ahead 97-96 with 36 seconds left. Harder got caught traveling with 28 seconds remaining and Laing dribbled the ball up the court long enough to take 15 seconds off the clock before he got fouled. Laing sunk both free throws and rookie Keaton Fisher capped the scoring with two more foul shots.
"It was a close one, we had a huge lead at halftime but we just lost our concentration and it was a defensive collapse," said Harder. "Definitely the zone helped them a bit and we couldn't pull it out."
PGSS defeated the Kelly Road Roadrunners 101-71 Saturday afternoon in the tournament semifinal round, while North Peace knocked off the injury-depleted Nechako Valley Vikings. The Polars will face the Kelly Road Roadrunners Wednesday at PGSS in one of two City League boys semifinals. Duchess Park hosts D.P. Todd in the other semifinal.
