Hopes of a crosstown championship game were dashed Thursday as both Brookswood and Walnut Grove were eliminated in the Junior Girls Basketball Provincial Invitational Tournament at the Langley Events Centre
In 4A action, the Walnut Grove Gators came up against the Kelowna Owls and were held to 25 points, while Kelowna racked up 68 in a lopsided quarter-final game.
The Kelowna Owls set the tone early with a 22-7 first quarter on their way to a 68-25 win in the No. 2/3 matchup with the Walnut Grove Gators. Denae Skelton and Phoebe Molgat led Kelowna with 17 and 15 points, respectively.
Walnut Grove’s Hope Nystrom led her team with 14.
The Brookswood Bobcats, by contrast, had a nailbiter of a game with the Sir Winston Churchill Bulldogs, losing 50-48.
The No. 5 Bulldogs held off a late charge by the No. 4 Brookswood Bobcats, prevailing in the closest of the four quarter-finals.
The Bulldogs led from wire-to-wire with the Bobcats clawing their way back into the game but their shot which would have forced overtime would not drop.
Claire Huang had 13 points and Marah Dykstra scored 11 for Churchill.
Brookswood was led by Imaan Lali’s 16 points and 15 from Celia Sierra.
That left the Langley Christian Lightning, the 2A Girls category, the only local team still standing.
For the second straight game, the No. 1 Langley Christian Lightning offence rang up triple digits, this time with a 101-45 win over the ninth-ranked Notre Dame Jugglers.
The Lightning sunk 11 of 24 three-pointers (45.8 per cent) with the trio of Lainey Shelvey, Makenna Gardner and Sydney Bradshaw each draining three.
Shelvey led the way offensively with 27 points, also grabbing nine rebounds. Gardner finished with 13 points, 13 assists, nine rebounds and four steals. Maezell Del Mundo scored 13 points for the Jugglers.
In 2A action Friday, second-seed Britannia Bruins face the No. 6 St. Thomas Aquinas Fighting Saints at 11:45 a.m., and that will be followed by the No. 1 ranked Lightning against the fifth-ranked York House Tigers at 1:30 p.m. Both games are on South Court.
