The North Battleford Comprehensive High School Vikings senior girls basketball team are heading to the provincial championships in Regina with an impressive win on their resume.
In a quarter-final game held at their home gym Saturday afternoon, the Vikings cruised to a dominant 80-30 win over the Moose Jaw Central Cyclones and earned a berth into the 4A girls’ semifinal that will take place Friday.
“We’re really working hard and I have a lot of confidence in the girls right now and how they are playing,” Vikings head coach Bryan Cottini said.
“With our performances as of late, I would have been really disappointed if we hadn’t won that game. It’s a big win and it’s another step towards our end goal.”
The Vikings took control of the game early Saturday as they raced out to a 26-7 lead in the first quarter and never looked back.
“We saw Central use a full court press against Humboldt in the game here Friday and that was something that I told the girls to keep an eye out for in our pre-game chat,” Cottini said. “I’m not sure if it was a respect for our point guard or what it was, but we really didn’t see that a lot today.
“I was really happy with how our post players preformed today, as they really took it to Central down low.”
Nahoni Tootoosis led the way for the Vikings with 15 points while Jenna Fransoo had a 14-point afternoon.
The Cyclones, who were led in scoring by six-point showings by Sydney Booth and Katie Coulson, advanced to the quarter-final with a 49-37 win over the Humboldt Mohawks Friday night.
“North Battleford’s a very good and aggressive team,” Cyclones head coach Jocelyn Wigmore said.
“I felt like our first half defence was pretty good, as we were matching their aggressiveness, but we just couldn’t hold them off as they kept pushing forward.”
The Vikings will be facing a familiar foe in the semifinal Friday at O'Neill High School in Regina at 6 p.m., as they will go up against the Peacock Toilers of Moose Jaw, who have won the last three provincial 4A titles.
Both teams have squared off in the semifinals the last two years at Hoopla, with the Toilers winning both times.
This year’s Peacock squad is much different than what the Vikings have faced in the past, as point guard Libby Epoch is now playing for the Saskatchewan Huskies and Louisana Tech bound forward Macaela Crone hasn’t played since suffering a knee injury early in the season.
“The door is open for us,” Cottini said. “We played them at their tournament in January and beat them by 20 points, so the confidence is there for us going forward.
“Peacock is still a good team though. They have a couple of small point guards that are very good players and our work is going to be cut out for us.”
The winner of Friday’s semifinal will take on either the Melfort Comets or the Weyburn Eagles in the championship game Saturday at 5 p.m. at Luther College in Regina.
Meanwhile, the John Paul II Collegiate Crusaders saw their quest for a provincial title end in Melfort Friday as they suffered a 52-41 loss to the Marion Graham Falcons of Saskatoon.
The Falcons would lose their 4A quarter-final contest to the Comets in a 96-41 affair Saturday.
