Redmen Ready to Roll

Jonas Emilsson
www.krammag.com

The Western Canada Redmen senior boys’ basketball team is still trying to figure out what kind of team they’ll be fielding when the 2009/10 season begins next week.

Last year they were one of the top-ranked teams in Alberta thanks to the stellar play of Dakota Laurin, who’s now playing at the University of Toronto, and Wilmar Teves, a rock-solid player many people considered to be the best point guard in the city.

The team found success thanks to the play of those two players combined with a deep bench that was more than capable of stepping up and making plays when the team needed it.

This season, that depth has all of the sudden been thrust into the spotlight to become the go-to guys on the court.

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Can they respond?

According to the results of pre-season tournament games, the answer is a resounding yes.

Last week, the Redmen ventured into hostile territory in Southern Alberta and defeated the Raymond Comets, the defending provincial champs and the Cardston Cougars.

They parlayed that success into two early victories in the Calgary Basketball Classic, although the team’s play through those games hasn’t exactly left the coaching staff with the warm and fuzzy feelings.

“When you go down and beat Raymond and Cardston in their own barn then you think, ‘ok, we might have something special here,’ but this week we haven’t show it yet,” said Redmen’s head coach Steve Wiebe.

The sporadic play, if we can call it that, could easily be dismissed as early season wrinkles that are surely to be ironed out as the season progresses.

If anything, all teams are probably guilty of the same inconsistent play at this stage of the season. It’s par for the course, and a main reason why all teams usually participate in a tournament or two to get their hard-court legs in game shape before results truly matter.

But based on pre-season results, it’s very safe to proclaim the Redmen as one of the teams to beat this season. Naturally, there will be a few teams that will have something to say about that, mainly the No. I ranked Sir Winston Churchill Bulldogs and the No. 2 ranked Bishop McNally Wolves.

“Until you see everybody it’s tough to know,” said Wiebe. “I know Churchill is again ranked number one and they’re tough in the North and they have some big players and they have some skill and they’re very well coached.”

“And I know that McNally won the cities two years ago with the junior program and that team is now in grade 12 and I think they’re going to be a mirror image of us.”

That mirror image is a team lacking in size, but making up for it with speed, clutch shooting and relentless ball pressure.

“We didn’t really know what we were going to get coming into this year,” said Wiebe. “We have some shooters, we had some skill, we had some speed…not a lot of teams size.”

And just like last year, where they fell just short against the Bulldogs in the city final, the Redmen have shown that they’re willing to take on all challengers with open arms.

“I didn’t know what our compete level was on the team,” said Wiebe. “They have surprised us right now with their intensity and their ability to compete and to pull their game to a higher level in games that matter. Right now I’m looking at this team and I think that we have a lot of skill and if our shots are on we will be a tough team to stop.”

Leading the charge for the Redmen will be the triple threat combo of Francis Cormier, Eli Prochnau and Nebojsa Kuljic, guys that played a vital role as first-year seniors last season.

“They have the skill on the court, they have the desire to be a leader and I think they have leadership qualities, they just have to learn how to step into that positive mentoring role model,” said Wibe.

The Redmen and the Wolves will face off in Thursday night’s semi-final at Bishop McNally high school.

The Bulldogs will face the No. 4 ranked Bishop Grandin Ghosts in the other semi-final.

A little observation – Kudos to the people who made the rankings coming into the tournament. The top four ranked teams all advanced to the semi-finals. Does that mean we should be expecting a Bulldogs vs Wolves final on Saturday night?