It wasn’t the finish he’d hoped for, but New Westminster Hyacks’ senior boys basketball coach Arno Richter liked what he saw during last week’s three-day tourney.
At the Port Moody Christmas tournament, New West took another step towards a top-15 level, posting three wins before falling 83-61 to the W.J. Mouat Hawks in the final.
One game in December or January won’t decide their fate, Richter noted, but beating both Yale and Salmon Arm are good indicators that New West is closing the gap in its hunt for a serious February playoff run.
“We thought we could compete with (Mouat),” noted Richter. “We beat Yale and I know Yale beat (Mouat) earlier in the season ... They are a very fundamentally sound team, they do the little things really, really well and they did it better than we did. That’s why they won the game.”
New West guard Norman Manacsa scored 15 points while Klyde Macahilo chipped in 11. For the Hawks, Kenan Hadzovic counted 26 points, including four treys.
The showcase for the Hyacks was their performance against Yale, which saw them erase a 16-9 deficit with nine straight points en route to a 75-69 victory. Manacsa set the tone with 15 first-half points in a 19-point effort, while Luka Cuk tallied 17 points. Chipping in with 11 points was Prento Durigan.
“We really gutted it out and it was a really gritty win for us, the type of win we needed,” remarked the coach. “We’ve been very close to beating those teams, we hadn’t yet so mentally for our team it was important to get a win like that, to prove that we can compete with the top-20 teams in the province.”
New West also bested Salmon Arm 90-80, behind a 26-point effort from Manacsa and 21 from Francis Federipe, and Port Moody 87-32. Marahilo tallied a game-high 19 points against the Blues, while Manacsa nailed 17 -- 15 in the first half.
Lauding a number of players, including role player Alex Tekhle, Richter was asked about Manacsa's contributions, which included averaging nearly 22 points per game, and hitting numerous clutch three-pointers.
“Norman can be a bit hot and cold, and when he’s on he’s as good a guard – he’s fantastic," said Richter. "He’s a great shooter and his energy is high… He was by far our best player of the tournament."
And while it was the third straight tourney final that they had lost, the glass-half-full view is how they are consistently in the mix.
"These are the games that are measuring posts. I only want to play these kind of games now ... I don’t care if we lose, I want to play these teams, it’s a way to measure ourselves," said Richter. "The game against Yale was a huge, huge step for the program. That’s the number-1 thing I’m taking out of it; we finally got a win over a top-20 team and it gives the guys confidence."
The squad’s next big test comes this week at Sir Winston Churchill’s Bulldog Classic. It began last night (past the Record’s deadline) with the Hyacks played Triple-A No. 1 Lord Byng.
