The PCI Saints basketball teams came up just short this weekend in their home tournament.

The Varsity Saints battled hard but fell short in the championship game to the Grandview Spartans by a final score of 64-27. Saints' head coach Jamal Cleaver says it was a successful weekend but there's still some aspects they have to improve on.

"Nothing wrong with 2nd place, but we really have to start working on not being a 2nd half team, which seems to be the way we've been playing early in the season. Overall, the games we played yesterday had much better ball movement than we had today but I think a lot of it is working on fatigue and getting in some extra time outside of practice."

Grandview Spartans' coach Marc Giasson says he enjoys coming back to play in the tournament year after year.

"We've come here for 3 of the last 4 years and we like coming here. They're good hosts and they've got a strong team here in Portage too."

PCI's Cass Cunningham and Mac Branconner of Grandview were named tournament All Stars.

 

 

In the Junior Varsity finals, the PCI Saints had a similar outcome as their older schoolmates. The Saints were beaten 59-31 by the very strong Vincent Massey Vikings team out of Brandon. Saints' coach Dave McLeod says he expected a tough game against the Vikings and he's proud of how the girls played.

"The girls played great. We're a work in progress, I expect us to start where we're at now and by the end of the year be much, much better. We knew Vincent Massey was going to be a test. We've played 3 games already this year against some opponents that weren't quite as strong as Vincent Massey so we needed a game like this to show us where we're at."

McLeod says other than the loss in the finals, it was a successful weekend and looks forward to the rest of the season.

"We struggled a bit against Westpark but we still managed to get through the game. They play zone defence and we haven't really done much practice against zone too much yet so it was kind of a trial by fire. I think we played a lot better against Vincent Massey. They have a good team and hopefully when we go to Brandon in January we'll get to play them again and see where we are at that point."

Vincent Massey's coach says it was a good weekend for her team and adds it was a well run tournament by Portage.