Lucas Punkari
For the first time since 2001, the Muskies are on top of the heap in the local men’s basketball league.
The squad captured the title last night at Fort High with a convincing 65-45 over defending champion Boston Pizza.
The Muskies capitalized on a number of steals in the opening stages to lead 23-9 just eight minutes into the contest.
While Boston Pizza was able to cut the gap to nine points in the second half, the Fort High crew pulled away once again in the final minutes.
“We just wanted to run on them, and getting those steals early on allowed us to do that,” noted Justin Anderson, who paced the black-and-gold with 17 points along with Josh Strain.
“We were thinking that they might come back so we wanted to keep on increasing that lead,” Anderson added.
“But at the same time, we didn’t feel like we were playing up to our full potential so we could have maybe won by more.”
Adrian Chapman and John Sivonen both netted a dozen points to lead Boston Pizza.
In the third-place game held earlier yesterday, Taggs broke away from a tightly-contested affair with the Rendez-Vous in the late stages to earn a 61-47 victory.
“We started off the game with four guys because I was late showing up, and we ended up finishing with four players after D.J. [Mackintosh] fouled out at the end,” noted Todd Richards, who led Taggs with 27 points.
“[The] Rendez-Vous played a very good game, though, and they were a lot better than what their record this year [1-13] indicated,” Richards stressed.
Toby Munro and Nate Berlin both had 18 points in a losing cause for the Vous.
