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Crusaders win home tournament in overtime

Jan 29, 2017 | 1:00 PM

The John Paul II Crusaders senior boys basketball team won their home tournament in thrilling fashion Saturday, winning 75-73 during overtime in the finals against Humboldt.

Juleus Moosomin’s three-pointer with under a minute left on the clock was enough for the Crusaders to hold off the visitors and win in front of their home fans.

“It was exciting,” Crusaders Head Coach Shalen Fox said. “[There were] ups and downs, emotions running high, emotions running low. We had a mixture of everything, so that was good. But to come away at the end, that was the cherry on top.”

The team’s road to the finals didn’t pose many challenges, as their first two games were not nearly as close. The Crusaders, who are a 4A division team, defeated Maidstone 72-43 Friday and Onion Lake 80-30 Saturday to clinch a spot in the finals against Humboldt.

Despite a solid performance in the early rounds, Fox said adjusting to face the only other 4A team during the final game was not easy.

“We knew it was going to be a harder team,” Fox said. “We played them earlier in the year and beat them by maybe 10 points. I think we just got used to everybody playing the first two games, and then to go back to our regular rotation kind of threw everybody off.” 

Because a team pulled out of the tournament at the last minute, the Crusaders were forced to field a second team which Fox said left many of their senior players with double duty.

“We had our 10s playing on both the [Grade] 9/10 team and on the senior team, so some of them ended up playing six games on the weekend,” Fox said. “I think that wore us out as we got to the finals.”

“It was good to have everybody play lots of minutes but at the end it was wearing us down,” he said.

The second Crusaders team didn’t do too badly themselves, despite being younger and entering at the last minute. The younger team lost to Humboldt by 17 points Friday, but then came back to beat Waldheim by five Saturday before falling to Nipawin in a fairly close game.

Fox said the senior team’s success was rooted in a deep bench as well as a strong mental game.

“The bench played a big part coming in,” Fox said, “and just having that composure at the end, knowing that we had a team that can play well and actually win a close game.”

Fox said it was a solid weekend for everyone involved, with plenty of fans cheering on the Crusaders throughout.

“It was a great tournament,” Fox said.

 

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11.