West caps golden week on hardcourt
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/08/2024 (422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
It was anyone’s guess who’d lead Team West No. 1 in scoring on any given day.
But it became clear the boys’ basketball team comprised of Westman Youth Basketball Association players was the team to beat at the Manitoba Games in Dauphin.
West capped an undefeated run with a 78-57 win over Winnipeg Gold in the final on Wednesday, securing its only gold medal of Phase 1 — besides a pair of swimming relays no other teams competed in.
“We were aiming for gold and that was the goal going in,” West head coach Chris Unrau said, adding they had three different leading scorers in the four games.
“This team is so unselfish. Callum (Brosseau) leads our team in scoring a lot of games and today we win by [21] and he scores four, and he’s fine with it … he probably only took five shots because that just wasn’t needed today.”
Brosseau dropped 28 in the previous game as West beat East 97-54.
The team had to adjust when overager Ethan Olson of Brandon went down with an ankle injury early in their second game on Monday. Unrau said the group’s depth made it easy.
“Almost every game, everybody scored,” he said. “Our depth eventually eats away at teams. We can just keep pouring fresh bodies in … and other teams don’t seem to quite have that depth, especially scoring.”
After beating Winnipeg Gold on Day 1, Unrau decided it was best to prevent drives to the hoop and let Winnipeg try to win with three-pointers. As long as Winnipeg didn’t get hot, West would win the rebounding battle and control the game.
“At the other end, kind of the same thing,” Unrau said. “We knew somebody always had a size mismatch. We moved the ball around and looked for cuts, looked for somebody who had a mismatch.”
It was mostly Trey Penner, who led the way with 21 points while fellow Souris native Kadin Pambrun and Brandon’s Victor Aderemi-Fawoye both hit double-digits.
West, which also included Brandon’s Sawyer Wallin and Nikos Telledis, Carberry’s Owen Unrau and Gabe Mignault, Neepawa’s Juris Luna and overagers (2007-born) Griffin Zilkey and Josh Romanik, took a seven-point lead into halftime, then held Winnipeg to just six points in the third quarter to break it open, leading 60-44.
In the end, West left zero doubt it deserved gold.
“It’s a really easy group to coach,” Unrau said. “The families are really good, there’s never been an issue with this group. It’s one of those special groups that don’t come along very often in kids’ sports.”
• • •
In baseball, West No. 1 fell 16-1 to South No. 1 in the gold-medal game.
West Green won the boys’ volleyball bronze medal, beating East 2-1 (23-25, 25-10, 15-13).
Phase 2 starts today, featuring track and field, girls’ basketball, rugby sevens, sailing, boys’ soccer, girls’ softball and triathlon.
» tfriesen@brandonsun.com
» Instagram: @thomasfriesen5