The St. Philip Boys Varsity basketball team won the St. Rita Raider Shootout basketball tournament at St. Francis High School,  while the Girls Varsity team placed third in The Master of Roundball Tournament at Cantwell Sacred-Heart Academy in Montebello.

Over the weekend, the Boys Varsity and JV teams both participated in a tournament held by St. Rita’s at St. Francis High School in La Cañada. There was an eight-team branch of the tournament that was held for Varsity teams, while the JV team played in a branch with four other JV teams. Varsity began the tournament with two blowout wins, the first over Holy Angels and the second over St. Bede. On Sunday, Varsity beat Holy Family, advancing to the tournament finals against a St. Elizabeth team looking for retribution for their first and only loss. The rematch was very different, though with the same basic outline: a St. Philip win, this time 44-37. The JV team opened their weekend with a loss to the Holy Family JV team, bringing them to a matchup against St. Louise. After a slow start offensively, the two teams picked up the pace, and the Falcons fell to the Vikings.

The Girls Varsity beat St. Lawrence for third place in a game beginning at 7:00 PM, then several members of the team arrived at the game in time to see the ending of the championship game, which began at eight.

Earlier in the week, the Varsity team had gone to Alhambra and blown out St. Terese, with William Coontz among the leading scorers with eight points. On Friday, the Falcons beat St. Elizabeth, one of the top teams in the league, 44-29 at Holy Angel Hall, a game in which all of the players on the team participated in and Coontz put up eight points in. In the St. Elizabeth game, the Falcons put the first ten points of the game on the scoreboard, and had a path to victory paved

The Holy Angels game did not begin very well for the Falcons. Holy Angels was tied with St. Philip about five minutes into the game before St. Philip went on a run where they outscored Holy Angels by about 15 for the rest of the half and the game became a rout.

The St. Elizabeth game was a sharp contrast to the game played just two days earlier. This time it was the Spartans who had a lead for a good part of the first half, and were up 17-9 with five and a half minutes left in the opening half. St. Philip came out of the timeout they called and kept the Spartans from scoring…but did not put up any points for themselves in the two minutes before St. Elizabeth had to call a timeout. In that huddle, the coaches said that they wanted to cut the lead in half and go into halftime down only four points. In those final two and a half minutes, the two teams traded three point shots and the Falcons made a basket, going into halftime down six, 20-14.

The second half was close for basically all twenty minutes, with the largest leads the bookends of the half, as the Spartans’ biggest lead of the half was six, where it was at the beginning, while the final margin was the largest advantage maintained by the Falcons. The referees consistently let the game keep moving as they called few fouls in the second half, as after calling nine fouls in the first half, they called only two halfway through the second half. The figure later increased, but that was partially due to the fouls that St. Elizabeth committed towards the end of the game in an attempt to have time to catch up. One of the fouls went too far towards the end of the game, resulting in an intentional foul, giving the Falcons two free throws (both made by tournament Most Outstanding Player Maverick Simmons) and the ball back.Those free throws with about two minutes left gave St. Philip some breathing room, and when Will Dalgarn (who made the all-tournament team) made the first free throw of a one-and-one with six seconds left, the Spartans would have had to score three times in the final six seconds, and the outcome was decided, and the game became official with a missed Spartan three as the buzzer sounded, and the game, and tournament were over, with the Falcons winning both.

Will Dalgarn and Kento DeNapoli were named to the All-Tournament team, and Andrew Caboto was named Defensive Player of the Tournament. Maverick Simmons was named Most Outstanding Player of the tournament.