With what has already been an impressively successful season at stake, the Peacock Toilers didn’t leave a whole lot to chance when it came to their 4A boys basketball regional playdown this past weekend.
A 55-point win, a 26-point win, bingo bongo, off to Hoopla 2024.
The second-seed Toilers rolled to a 98-44 victory over La Ronge in their opener Friday and followed with a 92-66 win over Saskatoon Bedford Road in the regional final Saturday to book their spot in the provincial basketball championship in Moose Jaw this coming weekend.
“It was a good weekend for us, the first game was a good warm-up game for us after not having a lot of practices and then today was a bigger challenge,” said Toilers coach Troy Setter. “They played hard and pushed us and we needed that, but everyone did their job today and that’s great to see.”
Things were close in the early going of the final as the Toilers took a 24-18 lead out of the opening quarter, but they steadily increased their lead as the game progressed, leading 49-30 at half and 70-45 through three quarters.
“We started off a little slow and could have picked it up a lot more, but we ended up carrying through and going up more and more,” said Toilers senior Luke Andrews. “We had a few 10-0 runs that really helped us take control of the game and that really made the difference in the end.”
Makungu Mutabazi led Peacock with 29 points, while Kai Houghton scored 15 and Andrews added 13.
Now the attention turns to the biggest tournament of the year, with Peacock facing Regina Harvest City in their opening game.
“It’s exciting, I need to win this,” Andrews said. “This is my last year and I don’t know if I’ll ever play basketball again so I really want this Hoopla and I’m super excited to have a chance to win it.”
Doing so will undoubtedly take an even better performance than this past weekend, something Setter hopes to see from his troops.
“There were times here today where we were a little careless with the ball and we can’t have that,” he said. “If we’re going to win, we’ll have to play an almost perfect game and hopefully we can do that.”
The Hoopla schedule will be released early this week, be sure to keep an eye on www.shsaa.ca for updates.
