Marauders defeat Crusaders in boys and girls basketball city finals

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It was a night the Walter Murray senior boys and senior girls basketball teams will always remember — and one the Holy Cross boys and girls squads will be unable to forget.

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The Murray boys, trailing by nine points with less than two minutes to play, stunned the Crusaders with a buzzer-beating tip-in off a missed free throw to steal an 87-86 victory in the Premiere Division city championship at Bedford Road on Saturday night.

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The girls final also came down to the last play, but Murray won it on the defensive end with a decisive stop on a Holy Cross three-point attempt that sealed the Marauders 69-66 win.

“We have the city champions board on our wall,” Murray boys head coach Scott Hawley said following one of the most dramatic March Madness nights in Saskatoon high school hoops history.

“We were just looking at that (Saturday) morning and said, ‘Let’s bookend (Marauders boys city title wins in 1965-66) with the last two years. And our girls team, what an incredible run for them. They repeated and we repeated. That’s just awesome for both programs and for the school.”

The only previous time the Murray boys won back-to-back city hoops titles was 1965 and 1966, while the girls until Saturday had never repeated as city champs in the 63-year history of the school.

‘MOST INCREDIBLE’ BOYS FINISH

The final play of the boys game was a stunner.

The Marauders had improbably put themselves in a position to win when standout senior Faisal Mahadhi was fouled on a three-point attempt with .9 seconds left and the Marauders down by two points. He calmly drained his first. Mahadhi missed the second.

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With the gym shaking, Mahadhi missed his third shot. As the ball hung in the air, Murray’s Nickolay Khivrich out-timed and out-jumped the Holy Cross rebounders to the ball and scored the game-winning tip-in as the clock hit zeros. The Murray boys stormed the court in jubilation. The Crusaders collapsed into shock, disbelief and tears.

“It’s probably the most incredible thing I’ve ever been a part of, absolutely,” coach Hawley said.

“We did a good job of putting ourselves in a position where something incredible could happen. And then it did … Nick got in there with an incredible offensive rebound and put back. When it was rolling off the rim, there was a moment where I thought it was over, and then just the incredible elation of an incredible finish.”

Holy Cross led 47-37 at half and build a lead to 17 points in the third quarter, but the contest turned when Cross stars Kian Tyson and Moe Osman each committed their fourth fouls within seconds of each other late in the third frame. With those two on the bench, Murray went on an 8-0 run to pull within 66-61.

The drama was high in the final moments. Tyson drilled a contested three-pointer to put Cross up by nine. Walter Murray star Zach Hawley scored a four-point play and hit another three pointer with 15 seconds left to pull Murray within two. Tyson had a chance to seal the title for Holy Cross with two free-throw attempts with 9.9 seconds left but missed on both of them, setting up the last-second dramatics.

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Hawley led all scorers with 35 points, while Mahadhi added 25 points. Tyson had 33 points for Holy Cross and Osman scored 23 points.

Coach Hawley, although jubilant for his team’s win, got emotional when talking about the heartbreak the Crusaders were going through.

“I feel for those kids, like Kian, I really do,” he said. “I coached those kids for a long time. I really just want to hug them.”

Crusaders head coach Josh Rutten told his boys that “there’s really nothing that I can say that’s going to make them feel better in this moment.

“It’s probably one of the worst ways, if not the worst, that you can lose a basketball game. (But) it doesn’t just come down to that one play. It’s over the course of a game in 40 minutes.

“The message I left with them is we’ve got to stay together as a team for one more week with provincials next weekend and I think we’re in a good spot to compete for a championship. Hopefully this fuels the fire for us a little bit. And I think we played really hard tonight, so I can’t fault my guys for that.”

It was the fourth straight time the two teams met in the city final, with Cross winning in 2022 and 2023 and Murray claiming the titles in 2024 and 2025.

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DEUTSCHER SCORES 51 FOR MARAUDERS

In the girls final, Walter Murray star Ryan Deutscher put on an offensive performance for the ages and a teammate’s defensive stop on the final play clinched the crown.

Neither team led by more than 10 points, and with seconds left the Marauders clung to a three-point lead. Crusaders guard Sloane Holt-Mellor led her team with 28 points but Murray’s Asma Banigesh defended her well and appeared to get her hand on Holt-Mellor’s three-point shot attempt as the ball fell short and to the floor, setting off the first celebration of the night by Murray.

Grade 10 star Deutscher poured in 51 of Murray’s 69 points, including 17 in the first and third quarters alone, plus her team’s final eight points. It was perhaps the most dominant individual performance in a Saskatoon high school city basketball final since Kevin Hollman scored 30 points for Holy Cross in the first half of the boys 2004 final.

“I think it was really cool to see Ryan progress throughout the year, and today it felt like she nailed that role,” Marauders head coach Katie Farmer said.

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“People look to her for confidence and they look to her to lead us in those moments. And she did that exactly. I trust her. Our whole team trusts her and we’re just lucky to have someone with that skill and confidence on the team.”

Walter Murray led 21-14 after the first quarter, by a thin 32-31 margin at half and then 55-45 after three quarters. Cross went on a 12-4 run in the fourth to tie the contest 65-65 with 52 seconds left, but four straight points for Deutscher restored the lead for Murray. A Holy Cross free throw with 7.1 seconds and two missed Murray free throws left the Crusaders within three, setting up the last-second dramatics.

Sydney Deibert added nine points for the Marauders. Taylor Randall scored 14 for Holy Cross, including seven points in the final frame.

Crusaders head coach Janaya Brown said she was proud of how her team “didn’t let themselves get down even when there was a bit of a gap there. I’m super proud of how we competed to the bitter end.”

Cross has now lost in four straight city finals: to St. Joseph in 2022 and 2023, and Murray in 2024 and 2025.

In Saturday’s third-place finals, the St. Joseph boys defeated Bethlehem 78-69 and the St. Joseph girls knocked off Centennial 65-52.

The Murray, Cross and St. Joes squads all qualified for Hoopla, the provincial basketball championships, March 20-22 in Saskatoon.

drice@postmedia.com

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