LOSSA AAAA Finals Information

LOCATION & TIME:

The LOSSA Finals are tomorrow night, Wednesday February 25th at Durham College.

Junior Final: 6:00pm - Pickering H.S vs Notre Dame C.S.S
Senior Final: 8:00pm - Pickering H.S vs Pine Ridge S.S

ADMISSION:

$5 for adults, $3 for students with valid I.D.  Kids 10 & under are free.

They have replaced the old bench-style seating with individual seats; the capacity is now 624 seats.  Should we reach capacity, people will be turned away at the door.

PARKING:

Parking for spectators is free in Founders Lots 2 & 3.

Hope to have a strong turnout and an exciting evening to cap off the 2014-2015 season.

Pickering will pull off the rare double... The juniors will upset the bigger and SLOWER ND team and the Seniors will upset the offensively minded pine ridge team....

Pickering basketball features high intensity defence, great transition and unselfish offence. If they control tempo both teams will have an excellent chance of winning. I question whether that will happen.

In both cases these games are the rubber match on the season series and one thing is certain this will be a knock-down drag-out battle in both Sr. and Jr. I expect an outstanding doubleheader!

I said it before and I will say it again.... Pickering is the underdog in both games... even though they are the higher ranked team in Senior.... Pickering will win the double tonight.... Defense wins championships.....

The best offensive team versus the best defensive team in Durham!

The game started out a bit slow, with both teams finding a hard time getting into any kind of flow. However ND's bigs found a way to score, and Notre Dame was up by 6 at half time.
The 2nd half proved to be much more exciting, and what most people expected. Pickering's strong team defense was on display, with hustle, fight, and pure intensity. PG Tristan Miller came out firing and hit 2 big threes to tie the game and force a time out by ND. He later had 3 steals and took a charge to sway the momentum of the game, to put PHS up by as much as 12.
Towards late in the game it seemed to get away from them and the team started to play more of an iso game, and ND took advantage. Feeding the ball down low and cutting the lead to only 6.
The game turned out to be a nail biter down to the final seconds and could have went either way.

Final Score: PICKERING 41/ NOTRE DAME 37

The way I saw it Notre Dame played a tough zone early and pretty much had the game under control. Pickering was unable to manage much offence in what amounted to a game of half-court possessions. Pickering was also in a zone but in part because of their bigs ND was able to break it down.

In the late 2nd quarter Pickering extended their defence to a full court man-to-man. At that point the momentum swung and Pickering took over scoring off of turnovers and transition.

I do not feel it is correct to call one team an offensive team and the other a defensive team both are good basketball teams and are able to get the job done on both ends of the floor.

On an individual level Tristan Miller was definitely the spark for the turnaround but Tyvahl Saunders was also outstanding throughout for Pickering. Eghosa Odiase was tough down low and was a huge weapon for Notre Dame. I'm not sure why he didn't see more of the ball in the second half.

In the final analysis it was a good game to watch and well played by two of the very best teams in the GTA.