Hat High boys basketball excited for opportunity at provincials

By JAMES TUBB on March 16, 2022.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

The Hat High Hawks are continuing their long history of playing in provincials.

The Hawks senior boys basketball team beat Raymond 80-64 Saturday to finish third in the zone tournament and punch their ticket to provincials.

Head coach Chad Watson said in the 15 years he’s been with the Hawks there have been only two times where they didn’t come out of the qualifying game.

“I think having some experience going into that game, season on the line, lose you go home, win and you continue on,” Watson said. “Reality is the boys answered the call, played really well, did a lot of good things and now it’s onto provincials where I like my matchup right now.”

Provincials take place this weekend in Lethbridge with schools such as Centennial, Cardston, Magrath and Holy Trinity competing at the three-day event starting Thursday.

The Hawks, siting in 10th, will face seventh-ranked Centennial in their first matchup. Watson said Centennial is a big, tall, well coached team that will be a good matchup for his squad.

“I feel like we do have some things that they’re going to struggle with containing us,” Watson said. “Of course, they have a lot of height and they are well coached. So we’re going to struggle with them at times. But I think that if we play our game, we’ll have a shot at beating them, which is always nice.”

Watson said the strength of the team is their “three-headed monster” of Sebastian Perez, Kai Noon and Connor Appell who led the Hawks offensively in their bronze-winning game with 71 of the Hawks’ 80 total points. He said they’ve also received strong play from Grade 10’s and 11’s like Arinze Aniagu, Trey Watson and Jeremy Ngo coming off the bench.

After two seasons missed due to COVID, Watson said his team showed how hard they want to work, adding it’s shown this season. As they gear up for provincials, Watson said they know what they need to be successful and that’s working together as a team, coaches included, to follow the game plan as they did last weekend.

“If we can follow the game plan and not get caught up in the moment and just play basketball, we’ll have a great game plan for centennial,” Watson said. “The boys need to follow the coaching staff and if we can do that, we’ll be successful.”

12
-11