{"id":26108,"date":"2020-03-06T18:02:06","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T23:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26108"},"modified":"2020-03-12T19:40:24","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T23:40:24","slug":"saints-bring-home-silver-at-conference-tourney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/saints-bring-home-silver-at-conference-tourney\/","title":{"rendered":"Saints bring home Silver at Conference tourney"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The St. Andrew\u2019s College Saints U16A Junior basketball\nteam brought home silver in this year\u2019s Conference of Independent Schools of\nOntario championship game this past week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their playoff push began last Wednesday on home court in\nthe semifinals against Upper Canada College. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both teams finished the season with seven wins and three\nlosses. The Saints finished in second place, earning a first-round bye. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In front of the home crowd, the Saints left the pre-game\nhuddle, whipping their hands together towards the floor, yelling \u201cdefence.\u201d\nThat\u2019s the mentality and every twist and turn in this game all stemmed from the\nnotion that defending comes first. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most prolific scorers on the roster, Kyle\nMurphy, stole the ball away early in the first quarter and put up an easy two\npoints. The Saints defended well with a full court press, forcing errors from\nUpper Canada College before their opponents reached half court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, UCC didn\u2019t blunder often. As a matter of fact, their\ndefence crafted some nifty turnovers of their own that resulted in transition\npoints. Number 31, Preston, on UCC, finished the first quarter with seven\npoints. Murphy for the Saints, recorded 10. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 16-14 for UCC after the first quarter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second quarter, it was still much of the same\ntempo and tenacity on both ends. All the boys were defending the hoop as if\ntheir time on the court depended on it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transition scoring continued up until the end of the\nhalf, tied at 30-30. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI realized right off the bat they did a good job with\ntheir zone adjustment, so I had to come up with something different that we\nused in the past against them, that we didn\u2019t really practice much, but I knew was\ngoing to be effective,\u201d explained head coach Marcello Lio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lio went into a 41 set with cutters to get the zone\nmoving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A diver was set up at the top of the key. The boys knew\nwhat he was talking about and executed it right away, only conceding eight\npoints in the third quarter, versus scoring 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony Lio, son of the head coach, contributed six\npoints of his own. Centre Nihaal Rana was a beast in the low post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 48-38, heading into the fourth quarter, the Saints\nremained dialled in. UCC did everything they could to remain in the game, but\nthe zone defence from the Saints forced turnovers that eventually deteriorated\ntheir confidence. The Saints even went back to man defence in the final\nminutes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saints advanced to the finals with a 75-64 victory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe energy built on each other, everyone was getting\nhyped and we just closed it out,\u201d said Murphy, after finishing the semifinals\nwith a 23-point night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony Lio, standing right beside Murphy in the\npost-game interview, emphasized his father\u2019s biggest quote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of his major quotes is \u2018defence first and if shots\ndon\u2019t fall, defence will always come,\u2019\u201d explained Lio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lio went on to add the team needed to work hard and\nprepare for a tough final. Murphy explained that Crestwood plays a full court\ntrap and it\u2019s difficult to overcome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Head coach Marcello Lio mentioned the same thing. The\nSaints lost twice earlier in the year to this team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the finals this past Saturday on the road the Saints\nfell to the Crestwood Lions 81-40. It was a tough battle for the Saints, who\nwere very tentative right from tip-off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until after the first quarter, down 25-11, the\nteam became despondent to a chance at a comeback. That didn\u2019t stop the boys\nfrom playing hard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the game was over, the boys came together on the\ncourt to receive their silver medals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m extremely proud. What we accomplished this season, getting here in this league, I\u2019m very proud of them,\u201d explained Lio. \u201cThey never quit. We were down by a good chunk of points today and the guys never quit. They kept working on what we were trying to do, defensively and offensively.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Belardi <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The St. Andrew\u2019s College Saints U16A Junior basketball team brought home silver in this year\u2019s Conference of Independent Schools of Ontario championship game this past week. Their playoff push began last Wednesday on home court in the semifinals against Upper Canada College. Both teams finished the season with seven wins and three losses. The Saints […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/2020-03-05-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6N6","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 03:04:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}