Jonas Emilsson
www.KramMag.com

One team appeared to be in mid-season form, the other was obviously still in pre-season mode trying to figure out their game.

The end result was a dominant 96-50 victory for the Western Canada Redmen over the Bishop Grandin Ghosts in the final of the HSBC Calgary Basketball Classic championship.

The Redmen deployed a blistering fast pace of basketball to outgun the struggling Ghosts, who struggled mightily from the field.

“It definitely wasn’t the game that I know Grandin wanted,” said Redmen head coach Steve Wiebe. “I know that wasn’t their true game, I don’t know if it was just the big stage or what, but I know they have much more in them than what they showed tonight.”

Click HERE for more action photos from this game.

Five-foot-11 guard Francis Cormier led the Redmen with 28 points and five-foot-10 guard Ammon Crowfoot scored 18 points.

Six-foot-5 post Eddie Asamoah led the ghosts with 11 points.

The Redmen, on the other hand, enjoyed a stellar shooting game, particularly Crowfoot and Cormier who showed terrific early season on-court chemistry.

On one occasions, the two took turns feeding each other for three-pointers on three consecutive possessions, resulting in some smiles and finger pointing between the two players.

“Those guys have a high basketball IQ and they have a good sense of the game,” said Wiebe. “They play hard and they feed off of each other. All of our guards to quite honestly.”

“It’s good to see because Ammon is a new kid coming in and he’s already brought good chemistry and I just love what I see from him on the floor.”

Crowfoot, a grade-11 player, transferred from Okotoks’ Foothills Composite High School, giving Wiebe a steady stream of high-scoring point guards capable of taking over a game.

As effective as the Redmen’s speed was in generating offence, it was even more effective in keeping the Ghosts from generating quality open looks at the basket.

Guards Eli Prochnau and Nabojsa Kuljic helped kick-start the Redmen’s offense early in quarter one by nailing a couple of three-pointers to get their team on the board.

The Ghosts countered with inside points from Asamoah, who had seven points in the first quarter.

By the time half-time rolled around the Redmen had stretched their lead to an insurmountable 41-19 score.

“I thought it was going to be a lot tougher, but we came out very strong with our defensive pressure, that’s what we focused on,” said Crowfoot after the game.

“Once we got our defensive pressure going we started pushing the ball and scoring.
What we did right the most was just push the ball and used quick passes. Other than that, we focused on a couple of their guys and stopping them, especially in the paint.”

The big lead allowed Wiebe to roll through his entire lineup in the second half, but the onslaught continued for the Redmen.

Naturally, the coach sees room for improvement, which is probably a normal reaction this early in the season.

“It’s early in the season and we have tons of work to do,” said Wiebe. “There are so many little things that we see and think ‘man, we have to fix this and we have to fix that’, but I guess I can’t be too hard on the guys.”

“Defensively, I’m mildly happy with some things that we did. Offensively we shot the ball well and did some good things.”