Leading by 11 points with only seven minutes to play in Saturday's Grade 8 boys basketball district championship, the Prince George Polars thought they had it in the bag.
But along came the D.P. Todd Trojans and their swarming defence to rain on the Polars' parade. The Trojans got in the faces of the PGSS ball handlers, forcing them into turnovers, bad passes and rushed shots, and that left their opponents nowhere to hide on the court at College Heights gym.
Fueled by the fourth-quarter offensive efforts of Trinity Robbestad and Cole Basnett and the ball-posession thievery of Adam Lee and Bryce Gargarin, the Trojans went on a 20-2 run and hung on to defeat the Polars 48-45.
"Our coach [Tanner Stephenson] told us to play some good defence and box them out and that's what we did and we came back and won," said the 14-year-old Robbestad, who shot a game-high 16 points.
Robbestad drove straight to the hoop unchecked to tie the game 40-40 with 2:14 to play, and seconds later Gargarin latched onto an offensive rebound and placed it in the intended target to put the Trojans in front for good.
"The comeback happened when we did the full-court press and they panicked a bit," said Gargarin. "I thought we were going to lose it when we were down by 11. They're a great team and that was an amazing comeback."
The teams were tied 18-18 at halftime and the Polars rode the shooting accuracy of Koshi Le, Tyler Lindstrom, Ryder Langthorne and Martin Saa to build a healthy lead late in the third quarter. But Saa and fellow guard Ethan Groggin, the Trojans' best three-point shooters, landed in four trouble and that took much of the spice out of the Polars attack, especially in the late stages of the game when they both fouled out.
"Their full-court press was the killer, we just couldn't get out of it and our shots weren't going down," said Le.
The Polars got the ball in play with four seconds left and had a chance to send the game into overtime but a long bomb shot from Jayce Schweizer bounded harmlessly off the top of the backboard as the buzzer sounded.
"D.P. Todd is known for its press and my senior coach [Nav Parmar] showed me how to break it and that's what I've been trying to teach the Grade 8 team,' said Polars co-coach Johnny Tatla. "They broke it pretty well in the fourth and they had to lay off it but they brought it back on. They had bigger guys than us and we had two of our stronger players who fouled out.
"It was a great final and hopefully the fans enjoyed it. It entertained the coach."
In the all-Duchess Park bronze-medal game, Condors Black defeated Condors Gold 44-34.
The Trojans defeated Duchess Park Gold in Friday's semifinal round, while PGSS scored a semifinal victory over Duchess Park Black.
