River Lions the team to beat

Get ready, Winnipeg, the CEBL Championship Weekend is finally here.

It starts Friday at Canada Life Centre at 5 p.m. with the Eastern Conference final between the Niagara River Lions and Scarborough Shooting Stars before the Winnipeg Sea Bears duke it out with the Calgary Surge for the Western Conference crown at 7:30 p.m.

The winners will meet at the downtown arena on Sunday at 6 p.m. for the championship game.

To get you ready for the biggest annual event in Canadian hoops, the Free Press spent Thursday chatting with players from all four teams.

Winnipeg Sea Bears

Record: 11-13

Points per game: 85.5

Points against: 89.2

Player to watch: G Jalen Harris

Top Canadian: C Simi Shittu

Would the Sea Bears be in the final four if they weren’t automatically granted a spot as hosts? Probably not.

That doesn’t mean they can’t capitalize on the cards they’ve been dealt and win it all this weekend, though.

“I think we have the team for it. We all like each other, we’re talented, and I think we’ve been building for this,” said guard Jalen Harris.

“We’ve been through adversity, we’ve had different rosters, and we’ve been situated now for a little bit, and it makes us confident in what we can do.”

Only seven players remain from the opening-night roster. The current squad didn’t start to take shape until June when Harris and centre Simi Shittu arrived, and it wasn’t until July when they brought in two more key starters in point guard Will Richardson and forward Trevon Scott who helped them go 6-4 down the stretch.

To get past Calgary, Winnipeg will need its stars — Harris and Shittu — to deliver. The last time these foes met was July 27 in Calgary when Shittu exploded for 28 points and 15 rebounds in a 79-78 road win.

Harris and Shittu sat out the final two regular season games and haven’t played since Aug. 6.

“There’s a lot of confidence. We had a lot of pretty good wins towards the end of the year,” said Shittu. “We’re excited for Friday for the atmosphere and to go to war with Calgary. But at the end of the day, we gotta just focus on us and stay within ourselves and I think we’ll be alright.”

Unlike the other three teams in town, they’ll have 10,000-plus fans backing them. The Sea Bears went 6-6 at home with two of those losses coming against the Surge.

“You need to be peaking right now and that’s been our mindset this whole time,” said Harris.

The host hasn’t won the championship since Edmonton did it in 2021.

Calgary Surge

Record: 17-7

Points per game: 95.29

Points against: 87.2

Player to watch: G Jameer Nelson Jr.

Top Canadian: G Sean Miller-Moore

It’s hard to settle on one player to watch when Calgary boasts a four-headed monster.

Its trio of guards — Evan Gilyard II, Jameer Nelson Jr., and Sean Miller-Moore — and forward Greg Brown III give them arguably the deepest roster in the league. The Vancouver Bandits topped the CEBL at 19-5 but Calgary defeated them four times, including a memorable 105-103 battle in the West semi last Saturday. In their two post-season victories — which includes a 103-95 result over the Edmonton Stingers in the play-in round —Nelson and Gilyard are averaging 61 points combined and both seemed destined to get serious NBA looks. Brown, who has 70 NBA games on his resume, led the Surge in scoring in the regular season with 19.5 points. Miller-Moore, a CEBL vet, was a finalist for Canadian Player of the Year.

Calgary, which is 8-3 all-time against Winnipeg, is searching for its first championship.

“We know we’re the better team but the playoffs are different, it’s a different ballgame,” said Miller-Moore. “It’s good to know we’re the favourites, of course, but we can’t really hang our hats on that.”

Niagara River Lions

Record: 14-10

Points per game: 85.9

Points against: 88.38

Player to watch: G Khalil Ahmad

Top Canadian: F Nathan Cayo

The reigning champs are the class of the CEBL.

Niagara has ended nearly half of the league’s seven seasons with the most wins and had never finished lower than second except for the shortened 2020 campaign.

Despite all the success, it wasn’t until last summer when the River Lions — led by Victor Raso, the longest tenured head coach in the league — were finally able to get over the hump as they outlasted Vancouver 97-95 in the championship game in Montreal.

They looked eager to repeat when they clinched the top spot in the East in late July after rattling off seven consecutive victories, but since then, it hasn’t been pretty. Although they had nothing to play for in the standings, they closed out the year with five losses in a row.

As the No. 1 seed, they received a bye to the conference final and haven’t played since Aug. 10.

“It was a big deal because losing five in a row is the most we’ve lost in the history of our team, so, going on a skid like that is never good,” said guard Khalil Ahmad, last year’s finals MVP.

“At the same time, we learned a lot from it, got a lot from it, as we were trying different things to get right for championship weekend. All in all, we’re in a good spot still.”

Ahmad, the CEBL’s Player of the Year in 2022 and the Defensive Player of the Year in 2023, is one of the brightest stars in league history. You also can’t forget Montreal product Nathan Cayo, a 6-7 forward who dropped 25 points and eight rebounds in the 2024 title game.

“I think we play our best when our backs are against the wall or when there’s a lot of pressure,” said Cayo.

“I’m super excited to see us play to our full potential. I feel like we haven’t played that way the whole year.”

Scarborough Shooting Stars

Record: 11-13

Points per game: 89.42

Points against: 89.04

Player to watch: G Donovan Williams

Top Canadian: F Khalil Miller

Scarborough lacks in difference-making Canadians but their import guards Donovan Williams and Terquavion Smith — who both average more than 22 points per game to finish in the top five in scoring — find a way to make up for it.

“A lot of it is gonna come down to me just leading this team,” said Williams. “The other three teams here are really good for sure, but for me, head-to-head, with the team following me, I think we’re at our best.”

The Shooting Stars are a streaky bunch but are coming in hot after blasting the Ottawa BlackJacks 114-81 in the East semis after taking down the Montreal Alliance 92-86 in the play-in game. They can hang with anyone, but they can also be sloppy as their 381 turnovers are the highest in the 10-team circuit.

Scarborough won it all in 2023 but only three players remain from that run.

“We feel like we could’ve came out of the East with the No. 1 seed. There were some obstacles in our way and we didn’t always handle them the best,” said Williams.

“For us, our record is more about inconsistency. I think right now, we’re probably the most consistent we’ve been all season.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca