Oakwood boasts top hoops team in province.
St.Thomas More's Lamar Barr, right, tries to break past Oakwood Collegiate defender Sheldon Moore during 'AAAA' OFSAA boys' basketball championship final action Wednesday night at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology's Campus Recreation and Wellness Centre in Oshawa. Oakwood went on to take the provincial title 47-34.
Photo/JASON LIEBREGTS
York's Oakwood Collegiate Barons may have sneaked into the OFSAA (Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations) 4A boys hoops championships through the back door, but they definitely walked out the front door - with gold medals around their necks, having astonishingly knocked out the tournament's top three seeds.The Barons laid claim to bragging rights as the best high school hoops team in the province, as they won the 4A championship game, played on Wednesday, March 10 in Oshawa, 47-34 over Hamilton's St. Thomas More.Oakwood, who were up by a couple of points (21-19) going into the second half, but down three (28-25) at the end of three quarters, engineered a huge fourth quarter surge, outscoring their Hamilton opponents 22-6, to put the exclamation point on their season.The fourth-quarter resurgence mirrored that of their star player, Julian Clarke, who had a sleepy two-point first half, but then came alive in the second half with 18 points - including a professional-calibre five straight treys - to wrap up his high school career with a gold medal game-high 20 points.Indeed, Clarke led his team in scoring in four of the five games at OFSAA.It was Oakwood's first OFSAA gold since 1993 - and they were underdogs then, as well.This time around, the championship game had an almost unprecedented match-up of a 5th vs 12th seed (Oakwood and St. Thomas More, respectively).But both teams deserved it.St. Thomas More capitalized on a shocking first round upset of top-seeded Pickering High School from Ajax 55-53. This gave the Hamilton school the relatively easy route to the championship game which they took advantage of, 46-36 over 18th-seeded Nantyr Shores (Innisfil), 56-52 over 14th-seeded Notre Dame (Welland) and, finally, 56-40 over fifth-seeded Vaughan SS in their Wednesday semifinal.But it made life much more difficult for Oakwood.That's because the Toronto school ended up facing Pickering in the second round - hardly the reward they expected after scoring a relatively easy 79-48 first-round win over 16th-seeded St. Matthew (Orleans).But Oakwood rose to the occasion with a 52-44 win over top-seeded Pickering, to eliminate them, and then, if that wasn't enough, proceeded to dispose of the next two seeds - 75-72 over third-seeded Richardson (Ajax) in the Tuesday night quarterfinal, and, finally, 65-60 over second-seeded Mother Teresa in the Wednesday semifinal.On the other hand, Oakwood was only a marginal underdog going into the OFSAA tournament.They technically had to take the 'back door route' into the OFSAA competition after losing the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) 4A championship game (64-61) to defending OFSAA gold medal champ Eastern Commerce who were seeded fourth and were ousted in the quarterfinal round by Vaughan SS.Oakwood had also lost to Eastern Commerce way back in their TDSB south division final (68-67).But Oakwood had also defeated Eastern Commerce in their regular season encounter (68-63) with first place on the line in the comparatively tough south division.But Oakwood, actually, still typically remained ranked slightly higher in local GTA rankings than Eastern Commerce.