Hoopsters bow out in quarter-finals

The Muskie senior boys’ basketball team is now ranked in the top eight of Ontario after wrapping up their season with a quarter-final loss at the provincial showdown in Timmins last week.
“Overall, I would have to qualify it as a success,” reasoned head coach Paul Noonan. “We had two goals. Our first one was to make it to the all-Ontarios and our second was to be competitive.
“We didn’t want to get blown out.”
Noonan noted both teams that beat the Muskies–Chatham-MacGregor and Kincardine–went on to meet in the gold-medal game.
“Other than the number-one seed [Chatham], everyone else was fairly competitive [at OFSAA],” remarked Noonan.
The Muskies, ranked 11th, had opened action last Wednesday morning with a 81-57 loss to Chatham. But they roared back Thursday with a 58-54 upset win over the sixth-ranked Woodroffe Tigers to advance to the quarter-finals.
It was Fort High’s first win at OFSAA. The Muskies had gone 0-2 in their two previous all-Ontario appearances in 1975 and 1978.
But their road to gold ended Thursday night with a 64-49 loss to the Kincardine Knights.
Noonan said the guys couldn’t defend the way they wanted to against Kincardine. “It was just one of those things,” he remarked.
Still, he said the trip overall was exciting. “It was terrific. The calibre of play was great and Timmins was a great host,” he enthused.
“The whole experience [was great],” he continued. “The win over Woodroffe was amazing to come out from behind like that at the end–it was really an inspiration.”
He laughed when he remembered how the guys were when they beat Woodroffe, saying people would have thought they had just captured the World Series by the way they were jumping around.
Senior Evan Woodland, in his final season with the black-and-gold, said his OFSAA experience was a good one.
“It was the best experience of my life,” enthused Woodland, who played hurt for most of the tournament after rolling his ankle while going up for a lay-up in the first game against Chatham.
Woodland noted he will continue playing basketball after high school although he isn’t sure where. Meanwhile, Noonan stressed he’ll be back as coach next year.
“Yeah, I plan on going back next year to coach the boys for sure,” he said.