Staff
For the first time all season, there were three lopsided wins in the regular-season finale of the Fort Frances Men’s Basketball League on Tuesday night at Fort High.
Some of those weren’t really wins, however, as the trend of low turnouts and forfeit games continued.
That being said, there still was a lot of fun out on the court and some great plays were made, along with a few significant milestones.
The first game of the night saw the BDO Ballerz taking on the Muskies.
With the Muskies unable to field enough players (the rest likely were resting up for their big NWOSSAA championship this weekend), they were joined by former Muskie Aaron Bujold and a future Muskie Caleb Richards and thus able to field a team.
But even with all the young legs running hard all night, they were no match for a BDO team that put all elements of its game together and came away with a solid 60-40 win.
Toby Munro had a huge assist night. Together with the rest of his team, they fed big man Chris Wall on the inside for easy bucket after easy bucket.
“Camo Chris” (because he was almost invisible to the other team and always got open) ended the night with a season-high 22 points while Munro finished the night with seven–just shy of a double-double.
Bujold led the Muskies with a 16-point performance.
BDO was thrilled to end the season with a winning record for the first time in a number of years.
The second game saw Arctic Cat square off against the RBC Lions.
Arctic Cat continued its disappointing run of having to forfeit games due to low player turnout, but once again benefited from some excellent playing from the team they assembled.
The Lions fielded a full team but picked up a sub in Devon George since the game technically already was won, which meant that three brothers were on the court for the same team at the same time for the first time in league history.
Theron, the oldest George brother, led RBC with 14 points but it wasn’t enough to stop the big man show put on by Arctic Cat’s John Bartkowski and Jeremy Strain, who combined for 36 points to lead their team to a 71-39 thrashing.
The final game of the night featured a battle between the Revco Renegades and Sunset Landscaping
As the only game of the night to not end in a forfeit, this game had a potential to be very close because it looked for a while that it would be a 4-on-4 game.
But Sunset eventually ended up with six players and consistently used their extra player to get easy buckets in the paint.
With regular high-scorer Josh Mastin not there, it was “Old Josh” (Josh Pawluk) and “Dr. Josh” (Josh Burley) who helped lead the way for Sunset, combining for 29 points to pace their team to a 63-41 victory.
Brad Wardas had a great game for Revco in putting up 26 points but missed open shots by the whole team ended up costing the Renegades the game.
And only having four players certainly didn’t help, either.
The league playoffs now are set to begin next week.
Since RBC remains in first place with a 9-3 record, they get a bye to the semi-finals, where they will play the winner of the quarter-final match-up between fourth-place Arctic Cat (5-7) and fifth-place Revco (4-8), who will square off at 6:45 p.m.
Sunset Landscaping finished the season in second place with a 6-5-1 record and will face the winner of the quarter-final winner between third-place BDO (6-5-1) and the sixth-ranked Muskies (4-8), who will battle each other at 8 p.m.
Due to parent/teacher interviews being held in the big gym, there will be no basketball on March 5 (which was supposed to be the league’s semi-finals night).
The semis now are slated for March 19, with the bronze-medal and gold-medal games to follow on March 26.
