Frontenac Falcons won both of their games to advance to the semifinals of the Eastern Ontario Secondary Schools Athletic Association senior AA basketball tournament Friday in Brockville.

That doesn’t mean they played that well.

“We were just lethargic,” Falcons coach Suche James said. “Teams showed up to play hard against us and we just weren’t ourselves today.”

Nonetheless, Frontenac, the recently crowned Kingston Area champion, defeated Smiths Falls 48-39 in its morning game, but was hard pressed to defeat Fellowes of Pembroke 47-45 in the afternoon.

Fellowes was the sixth-seeded team in the six-team tournament.

“We didn’t have that jump in our step and when we don’t have a jump in our step, we’re very, very average,” James said. “We don’t have the strength of a regular senior team; we don’t have the size of a regular senior team. We’ve been winning with just energy and if we don’t have energy, it’s all over.

“We were not very good today.”

Against Fellowes, the Falcons went ahead by seven points early in the third quarter but they trailed by as many as five points in the fourth before rallying for the victory.

The Falcons capitalized on two turnovers by the Upper Ottawa Valley school and a key three-point basket by Brendan Steele in the final two minutes of the game to complete the comeback.

The tournament, postponed for a day due to Thursday's inclement weather, resumes Monday at 10 a.m. at Thousand Islands Secondary School. At stake is a berth in the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations championship, March 7-9 in Timmins.