The Chestermere Lakers proved why it is deserving of its No. 1 3A boys’ provincial basketball ranking when it came to Airdrie earlier this week.
Chris Hendry had a game-high 31 points, while Hunter Karl added 25 for the Lakers as they nearly doubled the George McDougall Mustangs 118-60 in Rocky View Sports Association (RVSA) league play at the Mustang Corral, Feb. 7.
The Mustangs, led by Malik Drummond’s team-high 16 points, help Chestermere star Jasdeep Gill to 15 points, but the Lakers depth and up tempo style was too much for George Mac to handle.
“We knew we were in tough tonight, but we came in confident as we’ve had some really good games recently,” said Mustangs’ assistant coach Gregg Moss.
“Our whole key coming tonight was to try and shut down their main guy (Gill), and we actually did a fairly decent job of that. Unfortunately their other scorers were on fire tonight.”
“We’re a fast, uptempo team, and we don’t hide that fact from anybody,” said Lakers’ assistant coach Mitch Turgeon. “We push teams to play at our speed. We had our own goals tonight and we always play to our standards.”
Chestermere opened an early 31-18 lead after the first quarter, then hit five three-point shots in short order in the second quarter to extend its lead to 57-24 at the half. George Mac forward Drummond had eight third-quarter points, while his size in the defensive zone forced more Lakers errors than they are used to.
“That was definitely one of our focuses tonight,” Turgeon said of Drummond. “Our post defence is something we work on all the time. Different teams give us different things to focus on.”
Chestermere was able to rest most of its starters for much of the second half, but its bench play and depth is one of the team’s strengths.
“It’s really important, as our depth helps us a lot,” Turgeon said. “The more playing time we get our bench players, and more rest to the guys that are banged up, is key moving forward for sure.”
George Mac has a bye next week, while Chestermere will host Springbank and Bert Church will visit Cochrane.
Both games are Feb. 14 at 7:45 p.m.
Moss said he knows the Mustangs will be in a battle for the RVSA’s third and fourth spot in advance of the divisionals on March 2 and 3.
“Chestermere and Cochrane are the front-runners right now, and we expect them to probably stay there, but we’re very confident we can end up higher in the division,” he said.
