River Lions keep first place hopes alive
The Niagara River Lions kept their hopes of finishing first in the Canadian Elite Basketball League’s Eastern Conference alive Thursday night with an 89-87 road victory over the first-place Ottawa BlackJacks.
Niagara improved to 10-7 with the victory while Ottawa dropped to 12-6 with the loss. The BlackJacks came into the game riding an eight-game winning streak.
The two teams will meet again Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Meridian Centre in St. Catharines.
“It was a huge win. We have to play them back to back and we need to pretty much win every game down the stretch to have a chance to secure first place,” Niagara head coach/GM Victor Raso said. “These guys are obviously in first place and to get the first of the doubleheader at their gym was awesome.”
However, it wasn’t pretty.
“I don’t think we played very well for the first half but we played hard the entire time,” he said. “We broke through in the second (half) and it was a gritty one. We needed to get a bucket to win the game and that’s the tightest way to ever win a basketball game. I am really proud of the group.”
The River Lions trailed 46-40 at the half after getting outscored 29-22 in the second quarter. They cut the lead to 65-64 after three quarters and then completed the comeback in the final period.
With the first team to 88 getting the victory, Khalil Ahmad had a chance to win the game on the free-throw line but missed one of the two free throws. With the game tied 87-87, the River Lions got a couple of stops on Ottawa and then won the game on a baseline runner by Ahmad.
“It was a huge win for our group because we didn’t have E.J. (Onu) or Lloyd (Pandi) and it was our first win without them,” Raso said. “This group needed that confidence that they can do it and that they are just as good as they were before but we had to go out and get it done and we did.”
Onu left the team after signing a pro contract in Germany and Pandi is on the shelf with a knee injury.
Finishing first is crucial because that team advances directly to the championship weekend. The second-place finisher in the conference hosts the winner of a game between the third and fourth-place teams to qualify for championship weekend.
Raso knows there is still plenty of work to do starting with Sunday’s return engagement versus Ottawa.
“We need to play a complete 40 minutes. We didn’t do that tonight. We tried hard but mentally we lost focus at times,” Raso said. “I challenged the guys at the half that we were not following our game plan to the extent it needed to be followed. But we were playing hard and in the second half we did a better job of it and that allowed us to get through it.”
Leading the way for Niagara were: Antonio Davis Jr. with 21 points and nine rebounds; Edward Ekiyor with 18 points and eight boards; Jahvon Henry-Blair with 13 points; T.J. Lall with 11 points; and, Khalil Ahmad with 10 points.
Top scorers for the BlackJacks were Deng Adel (24), Thomas Scrubb (19) and Kadre Gray (18).
