Vincent Massey boys aiming high this season

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This article was published 30/01/2018 (3124 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Vincent Massey Trojans are hoping a strong start to the high school basketball season is a sign of things to come.

The Trojans varsity boys’ basketball team were ranked No. 2 in the province as of Jan. 23, after the No. 1 St. Paul’s High School Crusaders, and have a spotless 5-0 record in league play (Winnipeg Tier 1).

“It’s still pretty early in the season so we’re not in a situation where we’re at all comfortable with where we’ve been at,” said head coach Nicholas Lother. “We’re pushing forward here. We’re coming into a pretty busy portion of the season.”

The Trojans recently wrapped up their home tournament on Jan. 20, where the team finished second to the Crusaders after a hard-fought 96-93 final game. The squad is off to Kelowna, B.C. this week to compete in the Interior Savings Western Canada Basketball Tournament from Feb. 1 to 3, where the Trojans will face some of the top high school teams from Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C.

Lother, who has been coaching the varsity boys for four years, said expectations were high coming into the regular season with a lot of familiar faces on the bench.

“We knew that we had a handful of returning guys,” Lother said. “Last year we did pull up three Grade 10 students that we knew would be returning. We pulled them up a little early just based on where their talent levels and where their previous experiences were at.”

In the 2016-17 season, the Trojans were knocked out of provincial AAAA championship contention in the first round of the final four.

The competition level in the AAAA bracket is very strong this season, Lother said, and the Trojans put in hours in the summer to prepare for the first tip off.

“We tried to work our hardest in the off-season this year, throughout the summer and the spring, to set ourselves up for some success this year,” Lother said. “That’s the benefit of having year-long programming in place.”

Grade 11 post and captain Kyler Filewich said while his team is young with just four Grade 12 players, the Trojans have a lot of depth on the court. A number of players, including post/wings Donald Stewart and Lucas Meyer, also bring experience playing provincial club ball, he said.

Filewich, 16, was also named an all-star in last year’s MHSAA provincial championship and played with Team Manitoba at the Canada Summer Games.

“I think we’re doing pretty good. We can still improve in some areas but I think when we come out hard we’re pretty good and when we play our best we’re very hard to beat,” the 6-8 post said. “We just need to bring a consistent effort and we’ll be good.

“All of our big guys… we’re good at passing out to guards so when we draw attention we can find out shooters and they can knock down shots,” he added.

At this point in the season, Stewart, who stands 6-7 in Grade 11, said the Trojans have yet to reach their potential.

“We’ve had a couple of bumps in the road or moments that haven’t been as good as others but overall we’ve been able to overcome those,” he said. “We still have a lot of room to get better.”

Lother adds that versatility and a deep bench will help the Trojans in the long run, but a strong will to compete is steadily moving the team forward.  

“We have 16 boys on our roster and all of which, from my observations, believe in the approach of the program and have bought into what we’re doing,” Lother said. “All of the boys understand that they have very important roles on our team, whether they play a lot of minutes or they don’t play any. And that belief sort of allows us to maximize the potential that we have.”