The Kelly Road Roadrunners have ended a nine-year drought.
They swept the Nechako Valley Vikings in two straight games to finally reclaim the North Central zone double-A boys basketball championship Thursday and Friday and qualify for next week's 16-team provincial tournament in Langley.
Heading into the two-team zone playoffs, it was a tossup trying to pick a favourite. In their three previous meetings this season, the Roadrunners won the first two games by single-digit margins and the Vikings of Vanderhoof took the third game by 20 points.
Backed by an outstanding two-way effort from point guard Solomon Dugdale, the tournament's most valuable player, the Roadrunners started the best-of-three zone championship with an 87-73 win and wrapped it up by beating the Vikings 91-70.
"We came out strong in our home gym and it was nice," said Roadrunners co-coach Justin Soles.
"Solomon was the heart and soul this weekend and throughout the whole year. He's the kind of player who knows how to take over when it needs to happen to get the team going and he also knows when to slow it down when things are getting out of control. He's just an all-around smart player."
Dugdale led the Roadrunners in points each game, scoring 29 on Thursday and 22 on Friday. Centre Matt Price finished with 21 points in the zone clincher, while guard Garrett Cape netted 20 points that game. Cape took home honours as the tournament's top defensive player. Cape and Price joined Dugdale on the tournament all-star team.
Kelly Road received honourable mention status in the provincial double-A rankings heading into the weekend. The Roadrunners had a considerable height advantage over the Vikings and used that to control the ball under the hoops and get to rebounds.
"We have a very large inside team and that was our advantage against them," said Soles.
"Our defence in the second half of both games was the big difference-maker. We were down by one at the half Thursday and were up by five at the half in the second game and our defence really pulled together. We used our big guys a lot more in the fourth quarter to really stretch it out. There's not really a drop in our bench at all, we can play all 11 and don't miss a beat."
Kelly Road's record now stands at 20-12. Heading into the playoffs the Roadrunners had won tournament titles in Kamloops, Quesnel and Prince George.
They've played three of the teams they'll face in Langley - they lost by 10 to Abbotsford Christian in their first game of the season, beat Westsyde of Kamloops and lost to Sa-Hali of Kamloops.
"The feeling is good, I feel we can turn some heads down there and with the players we have it could be anybody's game," said Soles.
