Honey Badgers fend off Shooting Stars for first CEBL crown
Big weekend for departing coach Schmidt ends with a dramatic victory in Ottawa
A whirlwind season and crazy busy weekend ended in triumph for Ryan Schmidt.
The head coach of the CEBL’s Hamilton Honey Badgers guided his team to its first championship with a 90-88 win over the Scarborough Shooting Stars in Ottawa on Sunday.
And given that he took time off from the league’s championship weekend to be with his wife Whitney after she gave birth to the couple’s first daughter in Toronto on Friday, the title is the second-best thing that happened for him in a 48-hour period.
The child arrived while Friday night’s semifinals were being played. He flew to Toronto for the day on Saturday, then returned for the final — a perfect send-off before his next job as head coach of the London Lions of the British Basketball League.
The Honey Badgers, who finished with the best regular-season record in the 10-team league, pulled away from the expansion Shooting Stars and made up for a loss in the league’s inaugural final in 2019.
They won with balanced offence — five players in double figures, led by 17 from Christian Vital, the game’s most valuable player, and 15 from Raptors 905 alumnus Aaron Best — and tenacious defence that gave Scarborough no room to operate.
Ex-Raptor Jalen Harris, who averaged more than 20 points a game in the regular season, was held to just 12 for the Shooting Stars, going 4for-14 from the field overall and missing all five of his three-point attempts.
But the Shooting Stars made it a dramatic finish with an offensive flourish and defensive toughness in the Elam Ending portion of the game, which sets a target score to determine the winner. Scarborough cut a 17-point deficit to just one before Hamilton’s Caleb Agada made a free throw to clinch the title.
“As much as I want to say that was part of the plan, to end the game that way, it just shows our character and it was revealed again,” Schmidt said in an on-court interview with CBC.
“We had a lead, we kind of blew it, but at the end of the day they made plays to win the game.”
Now Schmidt, who worked on the Raptors 905 staff for about four seasons and was instrumental in the NBA team’s developmental process, heads overseas. He’ll coach Sam Dekker, the Raptors’ last cut a year ago, and see a handful of familiar CEBL faces on European club teams.
It’s part of the mandate of the league, to create opportunities anywhere in the world for players and coaches. As the CEBL becomes better known as a career steppingstone, its reputation in basketball circles will grow.
“Whenever we lose someone, it’s like a small victory for us in that we helped them get there in some small way, or provided a platform for them to get there,” league commissioner and CEO Mike Morreale told the Toronto Star this month.
“That will attract more coaches that want similar opportunities, or more players, or agents are more comfortable now sending players. The number of people that want to be involved in this league — coaches, players, agents — is in the thousands and thousands.”