By CLAUDE SCILLEY

Queen Elizabeth Raiders may be going nowhere this year but, boy or boy, are they eager for the start of next season.

If what they showed Tuesday in their 54-47 loss to the La Salle Black Knights gives any clues, the Raiders will be a team deserving of some serious respect come December.

Though they were blitzed by a 17-2 La Salle run in the middle of the first half, and trailed by as many as nine points late in the third quarter, the Raiders didn’t go away. With less than a minute to play they’d cut the gap to four points and they’d have done better than that, had they not botched their final two possessions, with a pass out of bounds and a missed breakaway layup after a steal.

Still, none of that diminished the hopeful outlook of Raiders coach Joanna Belfer.

“We’ve improved our ability to slow our offence down and be a little bit more patient and wait for really good opportunities,” she said. “The other thing is our communication on defence. We’re talking a lot more so we’re playing a team defence; (we’ve improved) how the team rotates and how the team helps. We’ve been working on that all season and it’s really starting to come together.

“It’s too late for us in terms of this year and the playoffs but we’re super excited about next year.”

The Raiders will graduate just three players from this year’s team.

“We’ve got a solid core of these guys coming back,” Belfer said. “We’ve got a lot of Grade 11s that are playing big minutes for us so we’re really excited about next year.”

In winning its third game in a row to end the season at 5-5, La Salle did so without two of its top players, Braden Elliott and Mason Kenehan, who were both nursing minor injuries. In their absence Jordan Price stepped up to contribute 17 points and Dan Walton came off the bench to lead all scorers with 18.

Walton had nine of those points in the second quarter, including a pair of three-point baskets, while Price was 8-for-10 from the free-throw line.

Brandon Cordeiro, with 12 points, and Marcus Walker-Sharp, with 10, led QE, which goes into its final game Thursday 1-8.

Elsewhere Tuesday in the Kingston Area Secondary Schools Athletic Association:

• The Kingston Blues clinched fifth place with a 45-34 win at Loyalist. KC finished the season 6-4, while, Loyalist ended it 2-8.

• Bayridge kept its hopes for finishing second alive with a 51-47 win over the Holy Cross Crusaders, the Blazers’ eighth win in a row after starting the season 0-2. Matt Brash scored 13 points and Jordan Fehr added 12 for visiting Bayridge, while Davis Maschi and Braydon Norris scored 12 points apiece for Holy Cross, which lost its fourth game in a row, and the sixth in its last seven after a 2-0 start.

• Regiopolis Notre Dame Panthers improved to 7-1 with a 61-26 win over Granite Ridge helping the Gryphons complete a winless season.

The regular schedule concludes Thursday with three games, two of which will have important implications for playoff seeding.

Regi can create a three-way tie for second place at 8-2 with a win at home against the Frontenac Falcons, who suffered their first defeat of the season Tuesday, 51-41, at Sydenham.

At the other end of the post-season bracket, Holy Cross and Napanee will break the tie for seventh place when they play in Napanee. Both teams are 3-6.

In Thursday’s other game, Sydenham will try to complete an undefeated season when it plays at QE.