Slighted Bandits out to steal Badgers’ spotlight in semifinals
Undersized, underestimated and overlooked.
No one’s looking past the Fraser Valley Bandits now.
The B.c.-based Canadian Elite Basketball League team heads into Saturday’s Summer Series semifinal game against the Hamilton Honey Badgers with a chip on its shoulders, and a craving for The Chip no one thought they could win.
“Everyone counted us out. Everybody in Ontario, all the media around the league, the commentators from CBC, you name it. Everybody had us in last place or second-last place,” said head coach Kyle Julius. “We were well aware of it … but the external expectations aren’t part of our process, or my concern.
“I think the big thing is that we don’t treat it like we’re just happy to be here — because I’m not. Not at all. We’re going to approach (Saturday) like it’s a winnable game and we’re going to put every ounce of preparation we can into it.”
The pundits based their predictions on Fraser Valley’s 6-14 record from last season, good for last place in the CEBL. And with the entire squad — save Abbotsford point guard Marek Klassen — being replaced, no one expected the Bandits to accomplish much, especially being the shortest team on average in St. Catharines, Ont.
“If you’d listened to some of the conversations that were happening before the tournament started,
not a lot of people thought we would be in this situation … and yet here we are,” said guard Jahenns Manigat.
“And (we) have a chance to go for first place, so that’s what our mindset is, and that’s what we’ve been focused on. We’re gonna keep fighting until the last buzzer sounds.”
The Bandits (4-2) finished second in the tournament’s round robin, behind only the Edmonton Stingers (5-1), to earn one of the two coveted first-round byes. The Honey Badgers (4-3) squeaked past the Niagara River Lions 8583 in Thursday’s quarterfinal and qualify for Saturday’s game with the Bandits. The Ottawa Blackjacks (4-3) face the Stingers right after.
The Bandits have defied expectations, even the ones raised by their 2-0 start and boasting the CEBL’S leading scorer in forward Cam Forte. But his 21 points per game average and nearly 10 rebounds were pulled from the equation when he left the team after four games.
Still, Valley endured, with Olu Ashaolu capably filling the void inside, and the small-ball team of shooters draining the second-most threes through the round robin.
The Bandits average more than their opponents in almost every statistical category, sparked by their swarming, long-armed defence. The key stats are points off turnovers (132-94, average of plus-6) and points in the paint (234-200, plus-6).
“We’re the only team that hasn’t lost a game by more than 10 points. Our greatest margin of defeat was six,” Julius said. “We’re the only team to not get blown out. We have the number-one point differential. So we’ve done well. I feel really good about our guys and the way we’re playing and what we’re trying to do.”
The Badgers, however, were one of two teams to bounce the Bandits — beating them 102-96 — while an Ottawa team desperate for a win was the other, squeaking out a 78-76 decision when Forte missed a jump hook and fouled a Blackjacks player on the rebound, who then hit the game-winning free throws.
Both Julius and Manigat have digested the film from the game against Hamilton, one that featured a mentally fatigued team make too many mistakes on defence.
“I think everybody, if you look at the tournament, everybody has had a stinker … and that was ours,” Julius said. “That was a bad one for us; on both sides of the ball we were bad. But Hamilton is a very good team. They made us play that way … it’s not like we just didn’t show up.”
“It was a couple defensive lapses that kept us out of our focus,” said Manigat. “Looking back at the film, there’s not too many things that they did that surprised us.
“A big part of it was just some of the mental mistakes that we made ourselves. And if we’re able to clean that up, we feel like we can play with anybody.”
Manigat showed that in the final round-robin game, an 84-70 win that clinched a bye for the Bandits. He was six-for-nine from behind the arc, shooting 70 per cent overall for a game-high 20 points. Now the team’s leading scorer at 14.7 points per game, he’s benefited from the better spacing and driving lanes that have opened up with Forte’s absence, giving him more open looks from deep as teams stretch and scramble to catch up with the Bandits’ ball movement.