Purple & White Championship Article in London Free Press

Hamilton trounces Panthers

HIGH SCHOOL BOYS': Cathedral Gaels win 71-56 over Brampton

By STEVE GREEN, The London Free Press

The Cathedral Gaels might want to start thinking about coming to London a bit more often.
After all, the campus at Western is practically a home away from home for the perennial Hamilton high school basketball power.
They won the 1994 OFSAA AAA tournament at Alumni Hall and Friday night made it three Purple and White tournament victories in six years with a 71-56 win over the Brampton D'Youville Panthers that wasn't even that close.
And it made Gaels head coach Brian Daly 12-0 at the Purple and White - he was the assistant for his brother Mark when Cathedral won in 2006 and 2007.
"That's hilarious," Daly said with a big smile. "It's a little-known fact, but it's a running joke in the family. Maybe I should retire now."
The Gaels simply dominated in every facet of the game against a team that may have been more athletic, but just didn't compete at either end of the court.
"That was probably our best game of the year," Daly said, who only had nine players at his disposal. "The positive is we played well and we came together as a team and beat an excellent team with relative ease. The thing a lot of people think you can't do against an athletic team is rebound, yet we're taller than them at every position except one. The guys just came to play for a full 32 minutes."
None more so than tournament MVP Steve Dely. He's built like a football player, but he has a deft dribble, can hit the outside shot and is a presence on the boards. He scored 17 of his game-high 19 points in the opening two quarters as the Gaels took a 40-23 lead and were never threatened.
"This is a bit unexpected," he said. "They're ranked high in the province, but we just hit our shots early. We just came off a tough loss (to Ancaster Tonnos in league play) and we were really hungry to come here and use this as an opportunity to get back on track."
Both teams are AAAA schools, so a meeting at OFSAA isn't out of the question.
"We're just going to look at this as a positive, but we also know we've got adjustments to make to out outside defence," Dely said. "We know these are going to be the teams we're going to have to beat down the road, so we have to prepare for them being quicker."
Panthers head coach Carlo Zoffranieri was understandably dismayed by his team's effort.
"That's what we're like sometimes," he said. "Sometimes, we just don't show up. Maybe they didn't sleep well last night. Maybe they didn't take today seriously. But it's frustrating and disappointing, because we demand more from them.
"We win some games where we don't play well, but we don't always play teams as good as that one. We're consistent with our lack of focus at times."
Neil Santos, the Gaels' dynamo at point guard, added 17 points for Cathedral. James Agyeman, Abed Emran and Aaron Ariri all had 13 for the Panthers, with Jazz Rai adding 10.
Dely and Santos were joined on the first all-star team by Gerge Johnson of London Catholic Central, which lost 52-41 to Cathedral in the semifinals earlier Friday, Kevin Ramos of D'Youville and Caleb Agada of Burlington Assumption.
Named to the second all-star team were Rai, Dani Elgadi of Waterloo CI, Mike Grantis of St. Catharines Governor Simcoe and Garrison Thomas of Assumption.