The ever-steep cost of car fuel had nothing to do with the Riverside Rapids' flame-out in Saturday's final of the Centennial Centaurs Top-10 Shootout.
It did apply, however, to Rapids head coach Paul Langford's assessment of his squad later.
"We ran out of gas... we did not have all our kids firing," said Langford, after his top-rated Rapids were knocked off 68-63 by Langley's Brookswood Bobcats in the title tilt of the celebrated 16-team senior girls high school basketball tournament in Coquitlam.
The two other competing Tri-Cities teams, the Gleneagle Talons and the host Centaurs, placed ninth and 16th respectively.
Ranked No. 1 among all B.C. AAA units going into the event, the Rapids had their streak end at 25 straight victories, including two previous wins over the No. 4 Bobcats. Riverside opened tourney play with an 87-40 romp Thursday over the Chilliwack Storm, then blasted North Vancouver's Argyle Pipers 88-66 on Thursday before bouncing the No. 5 York House Tigers of Vancouver 71-56 in Friday's semifinals.
Langford said the Bobcats -- back-to-back provincial champs in 2005 and '06 -- had as good a chance as any squad at coming away tourney victors.
"Ranking doesn't matter but beating them twice [before] was probably a big factor... we were due for a bad game," he said. "We need to be good every time out. There are six or seven top teams and we are one of them. We need to keep our speed up in the stretch and we will be good."
Centaurs head coach Rob Sollero, whose team lost all four of its games but fell twice by a paltry three points, felt the final boiled down to fate and timing more than anything.
"Brookswood is a quality team," Sollero said. "They run their system very well, shoot the ball [well] and play aggressive defence.
"[In Riverside's case], it's so difficult to play a whole season without suffering a loss. Sometimes a loss can be a good thing because it can get a team refocused and motivated."
The Cents -- coming off an impressive win at New West's Douglas Winter Classic tourney the previous week -- were ousted 73-51 by the unheralded Handsworth Royals and 57-54 by Abbotsford's Yale Lions, both on Thursday, before being blitzed 59-36 by Chilliwack on Friday. Playing the entire weekend without gifted guard Olivia Aguiar, the Cents wrapped up tourney play Saturday with a tough 60-57 defeat to Abby's W.J. Mouat Hawks.
"I think the girls were disappointed with their overall performance," Sollero said. "We came into the tournament on a roll [after] having won five straight games. Yale and Mouat... those games could have gone either way.
"To experience more success, we will have to play to our strengths, score in transition and shoot the ball better than we have been shooting."
Meanwhile, Gleneagle lost 62-50 to Argyle on Thursday but rebounded later in the day to beat Chilliwack 51-41. The No. 7 Talons then handled Yale 64-40 on Friday before closing play with a 62-55 loss to Victoria's Claremont Spartans.
After Brookswood and Riverside, rounded out the order of finish were York House, Oak Bay (Victoria), Maple Ridge, Claremont, Argyle, New West, Gleneagle, Yale, Handsworth, Chilliwack, South Kamloops, Kitsilano, Mouat and Centennial.
Brookswood's Luca Schmidt was named tournament MVP, while her teammate Lindsay Wand was chosen to the first all-star team along with Riverside's Natalie Carkner, Maple Ridge's Kolbie Orum, York House's Alisha Roberts and Oak Bay's Jill Cooper.
Second-team all-stars included Mira Donaldson of York House, Oak Bay's Laura Dickson, Arina Snider of New West, Argyle's Robin Aulin-Haynes and Riverside's Denise Spacek.
