The Holy Trinity Academy Knights started slowly at one of the biggest Catholic high school tournaments in the province, but found consolation in beating a ranked 3A basketball team for the first time this season.
The Knights were able to knock off the 10th-ranked Beaumont Bandits in the consolation semifinal on Feb. 3 at the Father Michael Troy basketball tournament in Edmonton last weekend.
The Knights went on to beat host St. Joseph’s Saints in the consolation final.
HTA started the tournament at three-quarter speed in a 74-66 loss to Notre Dame from Red Deer on Feb. 2
“We won the second, third and fourth quarter, but we lost the first quarter — we were down by 19 points at the end of the first quarter,” Knights coach Sam Aiello said. “We were able to battle back to lose only by eight… The good thing was we never quit.”
The Knights’ James LaGrange led the team in scoring with 34 points and Ryan Hassler pitched in 11 points against Red Deer.
The other good thing was it gave them a chance to play the only other 3A (400-700 students) team besides HTA in the tournament, the Beaumont Bandits on Feb. 3.
The Knights learned their lesson and they got off to a quick start building up a 16-point lead at halftime and maintained that lead going into the fourth quarter.
“Our guys got up for the game for sure,” Aiello said. “Beaumont chipped away at the lead but we were never really in trouble… This was the first ranked team we have beat. Our guys responded well to this one.”
LaGrange, who led the Knights in scoring with 22 points, said it was an important win for the Okotoks team.
“This is our biggest win of the year, for sure,” LaGrange said.
They led right from the get-go.
“We were strong right off the beginning,” he added. “We were attacking the glass and hitting our shots. We knew their main offence was to get into the post.”
He said the Knights’ Riley Moss and Kyler Helinsky came up big in shutting off the Bandits’ posts.
“They aren’t really big as posts but they definitely came up big for us,” LaGrange said of Helinsky and Moss.
The Knights won the consolation title by downing host St. Joseph Saints 65-54 on Feb. 4.
“St. Joe’s has some 6’5” and 6’4” posts and they got some pretty good looks,” Aiello said. “We started packing in three or four guys into the middle and started banging bodies making it real difficult to make post entry passes.”
LaGrange once again led the Knights in scoring with 32 points while Helinsky had 10.
LaGrange, a Senior, not only led the Knights in scoring for the tournament, he led the whole tournament.
He was awarded the tournament’s top scorer award for his 88 points in three games.
The Knights improved their Foothills Athletic Council record to 6-1 by downing Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans 62-35 Feb. 6 at Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School.
They will face their cross-town rivals, the undefeated Foothills Falcons, Feb. 13 at Holy Trinity Academy at 7:15 p.m.
