River Lions fall in semifinal upset
One-point loss to Hamilton sends Niagara to the sidelines at CEBL final four
Championship Weekend turned out to be competition, not a coronation, for the Canadian Elite Basketball League.
Instead of the national spotlight focused on a much-anticipated final between the No. 1 seed Niagara River Lions and the second-seeded Edmonton Stingers, the host Saskatchewan Rattlers played the upstart Hamilton Honey Badgers Sunday in a battle between the third and fourth seeds.
Regular-season champion Niagara, which compiled a 15-5 record in league play, saw its season-long dream of playing for the title dashed in a 104-103 loss to 10-10 Hamilton in the semifinal round Saturday.
Saskatchewan, 11-9, set the stage for an afternoon of upsets with an 85-83 defeat of 14-6 Edmonton in the early game.
While the River Lions were favoured heading into the final four after winning the regularseason series with the Honey Badgers 3-1, Niagara general manager-head coach Victor Raso wasn’t among those who thought an Edmonton-Niagara final was a slam dunk. “I can’t really speak too much for Edmonton, but it was exactly when I told you about Hamilton last week,” he said. “They are incredibly talented, they have two big, incredible scorers in Xavier Rathan-Mayes and Ricky Tarrant, and there are other very talented players around them. They didn’t do anything that we didn’t expect, but they just made tough shot after tough shot.”
Hamilton and Niagara traded scoring runs in their tightly contested elimination game. The score was 34-34 after one quarter, 55-54 in favour of the Honey Badgers at halftime and 71-40 River Lions heading into the last quarter. No lead was greater than eight points, with Hamilton up by that many at one point. Niagara’s biggest lead was four.
A game in which the River Lions won the rebounding battle 47-41 but were outscored 23-21 in points off turnovers was a nailbiter until the final buzzer.
Niagara took a 102-101 lead on Trae Bell Haynes’ field goal with 1:41 remaining in regulation. Hamilton regained the lead and went up 104-102 on a three-pointer 13 seconds later.
The River Lions held Hamilton scoreless the rest of the way, but were unable to take advantage of scoring opportunities. They went 1-for-4 from the free-throw line, 0-for-2 from beyond the threepoint arc and 0-for-1 from twopoint range.
Niagara also didn’t get the start the game the way it needed to.
“We didn’t play well, especially at the beginning. I think our guys were so amped up for this that for the first five minutes of the game, when we really needed to make their best players uncomfortable, we didn’t do that,” Raso, the league’s coach of the year, said.
The Niagara coaching staff didn’t go over the loss immediately after the game, as they normally would. Instead, the game was discussed with “much more clearer minds” at a team meeting Sunday night.
“I just told the guys, ‘Thank you, thank you for everything you’ve done for us, thank you for committing to improving over the summer,’ ” Raso said.
“We can talk about stuff later, but last night, after the game, it’s almost an impossible task to go in there, look at those guys,” he added.
Raso had nothing but good things to say about his players after the heartbreaking loss.
“You don’t get necessarily what you deserve, and those guys deserve the entire world,” he said. “They’re fantastic people,” he said.
Yohanny Dalembert led Niagara with a double-double, 13 points and 11 rebounds. Also scoring in double digits for the River Lions were Ryan Anderson, with 26 points; Guillaume Boucard, the Canadian player of the year, 21; Bell-Haynes, 14; Nem Mitrovic, 12; and Dorian Pinson, nine.
Boucard and Anderson came down with nine and eight rebounds, respectively.
Niagara swept Hamilton at home during the regular season — 107-96, June 8; 108-96, June 26 — and split with the Honey Badgers on the road, losing 107-95 June 12 and closing out the schedule with a 108-94 victory Aug. 14.