The Cowichan Secondary Thunderbirds senior boys played one of their best halves of basketball last Friday, but still weren’t able to overcome a nine-point halftime deficit as they lost 82-79 to Semiahmoo.
“It was a good game,” Cowichan coach Lucky Walia said. “Semiahmoo has a nice program going right now, and we expected a competitive matchup. They had played at Oak Bay the previous night, and were up for most of that game, eventually losing by five.”
Walia said the second half featured some of the best basketball the T-Birds had played this season, but it wasn’t enough to get back on top.
“Overall, we had many different members of our team contribute, with seven of the boys hitting the score sheet,” Walia said. “That said, early in the game, when we couldn’t really get into a rhythm on offence, Noah Charles made himself available for some strong post-ups, which led them to start double-teaming him. He was able to counter that with a couple of nice face up drives to demonstrate the variety in his game. The attention that he drew, started opening things up for the rest of us.”
Charles finished the night with 14 points and a team-high seven rebounds.
After showing his diversity against Dover Bay in Cowichan’s previous game, Humza Khan returned to a more traditional point guard role and scored 31 points, including 7-for-7 shooting from the free-throw line, part of a 15-for-19 night for the T-Birds as a team.
Eston Unrau got into foul trouble early, but ended up with 17 points, scored in a variety of ways, everything from drives to the rim to a couple of threes.
Matt Miller and Andy Derocher logged heavy minutes in defensive roles and played with “high intensity and purpose,” Walia said.
The T-Birds will return to action this Friday when they play host to Claremont at 5:30 p.m.