The Prince Charles Secondary School Comets ride a six-game winning streak into their home basketball tournament this weekend.
The senior boys’ team, fresh off its second-straight championship in Kimberley, seeks to make it three titles in a row Friday and Saturday when Stanley Humphries of Castlegar, Fernie and Nakusp come to town.
The Comets swept three games in Kimberley on Jan. 17 and 18 after doing the same in their last action before the Christmas break, Dec. 13 and 14 at Mt. Sentinel in South Slocan.
Their only losses of the 2013-14 season came in their first tournament, when they dropped three games at David Thompson in Invermere while playing short-handed.
“The first tourney all the Grade 12s were at the provincials for volleyball, every single one of them,” said Mike Poznikoff, who coaches the Comets with Doug Dortman. “They had to bring up a couple juniors.”
Their closest defeat that weekend was by a single point to Selkirk of Kimberley, which they handled by double digits with a full squad this month. Riley Hills, whom Poznikoff called a “defensive juggernaut,” was the team’s player-of-the-game.
PCSS also thumped Mount Baker of Cranbrook in Kimberley, led by another Grade 12 student, Brayden Czar, who “ended up being one of our higher scorers,” Poznikoff said. “He got fired up early and kept it going.”
The championship game against Osoyoos was a 98-48 blowout in which a Grade 11 student, Donovan Osterreicher, earned top player honours after coming off the bench to net a dozen points.
“He’s our sixth man,” Poznikoff said. “The time we had him on the floor he produced some good numbers.”
Overall, the Comets rely more on speed than size to dominate opponents, who are falling by an average of more than 20 points.
“The quickness of the team is what caught the other teams off guard,” the coach said. “The ability to defend and the transition to score was really quick, which allowed for a lot of fast breaks.”
Kieran Poznikoff, Dean Torgrimson, Jared Kuny, Peter Tarrant and Isaac Janzen are the other Grade 12 players, with Grade 11 students Mitchell Bell and Sunny and Jarret Oler rounding out the lineup.
At Mt. Sentinel they ran the table against a Kamloops private school, J.L. Crowe of Trail and Grand Forks, with the closest margin of victory 20-plus and the largest pushing 50.
Indeed, it’s “definitely (been) a big turnaround over the season,” according to Poznikoff, who is looking forward to meeting a couple of teams for the first time this weekend, Castlegar and Nakusp.
He said the Comets’ good chemistry stems from many of the older players having been teammates on not only PCSS basketball but volleyball and soccer teams over the years.
The boys play at Fernie on Feb. 14 and 15 and in the East Kootenay championships in Golden the following weekend, with a berth in the March 5-8 provincials on the line.
PCSS senior girls, meanwhile, host Nakusp, Selkirk and Bonners Ferry, Idaho, this weekend.
—SUBMITTED