It wasn’t the gold-plated ending to the season Kelowna Owls had envisioned.
KSS, ranked No. 1 for the majority of the 2011-12 campaign, settled for seventh place at the B.C. AAA boys high school basketball championship in Langley.
The Owls closed out the tournament Saturday afternoon with a 62-53 loss to Pitt Meadows in the 5th/7th place game.
Kelowna’s big man, 6-foot-11 post Braxston Bunce, who was slowed by a lower leg injury for much of the tournament, played just eight minutes against the Marauders in ending his stellar high school career with the Owls.
Fellow grad and star point guard Mitch Goodwin led Kelowna with 16 points.
It was two nights earlier that Kelowna’s title dreams were derailed once and for all, in a heart-wrenching 78-76 loss to the Vancouver College Fighting Irish in the quarterfinal round.
It was the second year in a row that Van College had knocked off the Owls in the quarters.The Irish also beat Kelowna 88-70 back on Feb. 17.
The Owls opened the tournament with an 83-54 victory over Point Grey on Wednesday.
Their other victory came on Friday on the bottom half of the championship draw, 75-56 over the W.J. Mouat Hawks.
Still, even with no B.C. medal to show for it, it was largely a successful season for the Owls who posted a 32-7 record, including tournament wins at both the Telus Classic and Okanagan Valley championship.
The athletically-gifted Goodwin capped a spectacular high school careerin style by being named to the tournament’s third all-star team. Goodwin, who moved to Kelowna for his Grade 11 year, averaged 20 points per game at provincials, shooting 55 per cent from the field and 88.9 per cent from the line.
The B.C. championship marked the end of the high school careers of four Owls: Bunce, Goodwin, Austin Axenty and Neven Knezevic.
Bunce is headed to New York this fall to play with Cornell University, while Goodwin will play at Blair Academy, a university-prep school in Blairstown, New Jersey.
