The St. Michaels University School Blue Jags have been about as close as you can get to winning a provincial 3A basketball title the last couple of seasons. And they should be well in the hunt for the crown again this coming March.
“We’ve been right around it,” says head coach Lindsay Brooke, who guided her team to a second-place finish last year in the 16-team BC tournament at the Langley Events Centre and a third-place showing the year before.
In what has been a golden age for SMUS girls basketball, the Blue Jags occupied the No. 1 spot in preseason BC AAA rankings and figure to be “right around it” again in 2023-24, albeit with a much different look than they’ve shown the past three seasons.
Lost to graduation this year was Makena Anderson, a 6-0 forward who is now playing her freshman season with the UVic Vikes. That big departure has meant the Blue Jags have switched identities, from a post-focused offence to a smaller, quicker, guard-oriented attack.
“We’re pivoting a little bit,” says Brooke, who has incorporated the Princeton offence, which relies more heavily on off-ball screens, cutting, passing and player ‘reads’ than working to pound the ball inside.
“Our guard play will be critical. We will try to play an up-tempo game.”
When they’re healthy, these Blue Jags certainly have the personnel for an up-tempo, backcourt-oriented style. However, they don’t figure to be 100 per cent in the backcourt for five or six weeks after Grade 11 point guard Avery Geddes injured her left thumb and had to undergo surgery earlier this week.
SMUS will no doubt miss the capable Geddes, who last summer steered the BC U-17 team at nationals as an underage after playing for the provincial U-15 team the season before. But while it’s a disappointing turn of fate, Brooke sees a silver lining for her team.
“She will pretty much miss all of our tournament play,” Brooke says. “But it will be an excellent opportunity for others to develop and, hopefully, we get her back at the end of January.”
The backcourt remains a strength nonetheless, with Grade 11 Charlie Anderson, a terrific athlete and the younger sister of Makena, who was the sparkplug on the SMUS Junior team that finished 10th in last year’s BC tournament, and Alex Motherwell, a physical senior guard who was the defensive MVP of the BC AAA tournament last March.
Leading the way for the Blue Jags at the forward position are a pair of Grade 12s in Maddy Albert and Liv Vincent. They’re back from the squad that fell 67-64 to Abbotsford Senior Secondary in last March’s BC championship game.
“We’re small and quick – we’re not a big squad,” Brooke says. “So, definitely we have to move the ball, we have to have good pressure defence and be able to guard other teams’ bigger players. And offensively, we need to be able to shoot the ball well.”
Several members of this team have been playing basketball together for years, which means they are ahead of the game in terms of on-court IQ and tactical knowledge, Brooke says. And Geddes’ expected return should coincide with the beginning of playoffs and will give the Blue Jags a backcourt boost, which would bode well for a post-season run.
“Our guards can run, shoot and slash,” Brooke says. “They will be critical to our success.”
The Blue Jags opened the regular season last week with a 75-32 home win over Belmont, as Geddes poured in 30 points. But the team sputtered a bit at the Victoria Christmas Tournament over last weekend, edging Harry Ainlay of Edmonton 40-39 before falling 83-57 to BC 4A No. 1 Riverside and 65-46 to Seaquam. SMUS continued its league dominance this Tuesday, with a 73-31 road win at Royal Bay.
Brooke, along with assistant coaches Carmen Lapthorne and Kate de Goede, will lead the Blue Jags into another very tough tournament – the Tsumura Basketball Invitational – beginning Wednesday in Langley. SMUS opens that tournament against Okanagan Mission at 7:45 pm. All games will be livestreamed on tfsetv.ca.
The Blue Jags’ tournament schedule is challenging this season. It also includes the Riverside tournament in Coquitlam, and the Top 10 Tournament at Chilliwack’s GW Graham Secondary. In addition, SMUS will be hosting top teams Mulgrave and Mennonite Educational Institute in exhibition games January 5 and 6.
“We have an incredibly difficult schedule, by design,” Brooke says. “We will see the top teams regularly in our tournament play.”
Brooke believes Reynolds (3A No. 5) will be the Blue Jags’ top 3A competition locally but Mark Isfeld of Courtenay is also a 3A Honourable Mention. On the Mainland, she sees South Kamloops, Brookswood and MEI as strong rivals.
