Haydn Molcak's electrifying slam dunk three minutes into the second quarter gave the D.P. Todd Trojans a lead they never gave up on the way to a 98-58 victory in Wednesday's City League senior boys basketball final.
Trailing 19-10 after one quarter, the Trojans turned things around in the second frame.
"We were tied at 20-something and I got that dunk and from there it kept getting better and better," said Molcak, a Grade 11 post who led his team with 21 points. "It was a great final. We worked hard and kept the pressure on and never looked back. The crowd was awesome, it gave us such a momentum shift."
For Trojan point guard Tanner Stephenson, a Trojan co-captain and one of six Grade 12s on the team, Wednesday's win was sweet redemption after twice losing to Duchess Park in the City League final.
"It's the best feeling in the world, I've been waiting a long time for this, this is a highlight moment of my life right now," said Stephenson, who hit five threes in a 16-point effort.
"Tyrell [Laing] was hitting his shots and they scored 19 on us in the first quarter but Haydn's dunk just set everyone off and made us all more excited and more intense," said Stephenson. "D.P. Todd is one of the schools with the most support in town, it's an amazing crowd to have."
It soon became apparent when PGSS took the early lead this wouldn't be a walkover for the undefeated Trojans, not with Laing dictating traffic. The Grade 10 Polar prodigy was a scoring threat just about every time he had the ball in his hands and proved his long-range accuracy with two swishes from just over the halfcourt line, on the way to a 34-point game.
"We played extremely well in the first half and they made their adjustments in the second half and took us out of the game a bit -- they have some size and they were hitting shots," said Polars head coach Nav Parmar. "The one message I told to the kids was we weren't even expected to be in this game at the beginning of the season, and the way we've come together these last three months, it's like building blocks. I'm extremely proud of them."
By the second quarter, bolstered by the deafening roars of their Red Nation supporters in the stands, the Trojans got down to work closing up the space around the Polar ball carriers, which led to turnovers and scoring opportunities that showed in a 39-26 Trojan lead by halftime.
Haydn Molcak hit for 21 points, while his brother Joel and Anthony Myjatovic each collected 19.
"This is our year," said Myjatovic. "We just did what we could to keep Tyrell off the ball, if he doesn't have the ball he can't score. Our game runs off defence, the stronger our defence is the better we play."
The D.P. Todd drought lasted nine years for Trojans head coach Norm Garfield, who had taken his team to the previous four finals and each time came up second-best. He'd been waiting to get his hands on the trophy since he got them to the final in 2005.
"I don't like to be reminded of that so this is like a monkey off my back," said Garfield. "We just had to keep the pedal to the metal and we did that in the second half. I told the bench I was going to send the Grade 12s (Stephenson, Manni Dhemi, Raman Bhangu, Akhil Satish, Daniel Noel and Sean Gaiesky) for the last three minutes to let them play this out and the guys were pretty happy about that."
D.P. Todd will host the double-A boys zone championship next weekend while the Polars will travel to Quesnel for the quad-A zones.
