CEBL Highlight Games: Edmonton vs Hamilton, 6/14/19
For the first season of operation there can be a lot of uncertainty. Teams are looking to find their strengths and weaknesses and devise a game plan and club culture while also competing.
This Canadian Elite Basketball League match-up, where the Hamilton Honey Badgers travelled cross-country to the Edmonton Stingers, was a prime example of this. The uncertainty between the teams resulted in a game that went back and forth from start to finish, with the final result always hard to call.
The season was still young and both teams came into this one with similar situations; Edmonton had won four and lost three with Hamilton also with three losses but five wins. As such there was little to choose between the teams ahead of the opening tip-off, adding to the uncertainty that hung over this game when it finally got underway on June 14th.
It was a wild and breathless start to proceedings: no sooner had events got underway had the lead changed hands four times, the last of which saw Edmonton with a slender lead over Hamilton in the first four minutes.
Demetrius Denzel Dyson hit a three for Hamilton to put them up by one, the same margin Ashton Smith gave to the Stingers soon after. Sampson Carter hit from outside the arc, putting Hamilton up four, only for Grandy Glaze and Adika Peter-McNeilly to turn it around just as quickly. Edmonton led by one and five lead changes followed to end a quarter. Peter-McNeilly hit one last three to put the Stingers up one at the first quarter's end.
In the second quarter Mamadou Gueye and Daniels kept the lead with Edmonton who, after seven unanswered points, were ahead by eight after five minutes. Hamilton responded with a 6-0 run, making it a three point game, but Gueye and Deondre Parks picked up more close-range points in the last minute, gifting Edmonton a 49-44 half-time lead.
When play resumed the Honey Badgers look to overturn the result, with Justin Edwards and Ricky Tarrant Jr getting them to within one point after two minutes. Tarrant then put Hamilton up one and Denzel Dyson grew the lead with five points in a row for the visitors.
Glaze and Jordan Baker made successive layups to give the lead back to Edmonton, and more made shots from Graze put them on top at the end of the period. With the scoreline 73-71, it was all still to play for going into the final phase of the game.
Edmonton had six in a row to begin the fourth quarter, Hamilton responded with six unanswered themselves, which put them up by one. The lead, once again, went back and forth for much of the quarter until the game was tied with just over three minutes on the clock.
Ejim gave Hamilton a four-point lead, which Baker brought down to two for Edmonton, as both teams did all they could to hold each other off as time started to run out. In the end Edmonton kept trying to make the game-saving shot, but kept coming up shot. A final free-throw from Tarrant made the final score 90-87 in Hamilton's favour.
Mamadou Gueye led the scoring for the Edmonton Stingers with 17 points, with Grandy Glaze behind with 14 points in eighteen minutes played. Four of the Hamilton Honey Badgers' starters finished in double digits, with Demetrius Denzel Dyson and Ricky Tarrant Jr. both scoring 22 points in their team's victory.
Picture: The Hamilton Spectator
