The Croxford Cavaliers Junior Girls basketball team achieved perfection on the weekend with a dominant win over the Cochrane Cobras to secure the 2024 Rocky View Schools (RVS) JV Girls league championship.
The Cavaliers cruised through the 2023-2024 regular season undefeated and easily pushed aside the Bow Valley Bobcats 67-22 in their lone playoff. The Cavaliers claimed the championship with a 57-40 win over the Cobras.
“Our girls just came with the mindset of wanting to prove to themselves that they would be able to maintain their mental toughness throughout the entire game,” said Cavaliers head coach Tassia Rushford post-game.
The final against Cochrane marked a rematch between the Cavaliers and Cobras from earlier in the regular season. In a mid-January matchup, the Cavaliers handily defeated the Cobras 58-26.
Sideways final scores seemed to be the theme of the season for the Croxford girls; in five regular season games the team tallied 327 total points–the most in the league–with some of the most lopsided finishes coming via games against the Springbank Phoenix (84-11) and the George McDougall Mustangs (64-23).
Indeed, the Cavaliers championship over the Cochrane Cobras was the closest game by point differential the Cavaliers had played all season. Once the first whistle of the championship game blew, the Cavaliers never allowed the Cobras to get within 10 points and the game ended–like so many of the Cavaliers games this year– with a skewed score and a Croxford win.
Strong defense near the rim shut down the Cobra’s offensive chances throughout the game, and fast breaks and converted layups helped propel the Cavaliers to a double digit lead early in the game.
Throughout their five regular season games, the Cavaliers averaged around 65 points a game and finished the year with a 213 point differential–the largest in the league.
Rushford said she credits the team's success to their consistent play, and that since the start of the regular season in December, the girls worked to improve their basketball skills.
“This team actually works as a team and they've worked like that since the beginning of the season, which really helped us build on things skillswise throughout the season and so they're just one unified group,” said Rushford.
Rushford noted that the Cavaliers strategized to control the game’s tempo through aggressive play. “[The girls] did really well on their one-two-two press, which is what we wanted to start off with just to set the tone for the game and I was so impressed with how they delivered on that.”
The game's final result was not surprising to Rushford, who said that the Cavaliers played no differently in the final than they did all year. “The team played exactly how they always do…they're really dedicated and [they] support one another super well and I couldn't be more proud of them continuing that into this game.”
The Croxford Senior Boys also took part in the tournament, but ended up losing 87-73 to Cochrane in the final. They had finished first in the regular season standings.
