Edmonton Protects Home Court by Maintaining Early Lead

It was just as beautiful inside Edmonton EXPO Centre as it was outside on Sunday afternoon, as the Edmonton Stingers cemented an early lead and defeated the Scarborough Shooting Stars, 98-81.

Today marked the second of Edmonton’s four-game homestand.

In the first quarter, Edmonton resorted to a shot diet that was mostly inside the paint. They were one-for-five beyond the arc, while Scarborough shot two-for-14 from downtown. Edmonton got off to a 26-11 start.

One of the keys to the game mentioned on the broadcast was for Edmonton to value their possessions – though every team talks about doing this, whether it’s actually practiced is another issue entirely.

In the second frame, Donovan Williams hit a triple, Sean East missed a lay-up, and then Williams hit a step-through lay-up to inch with three points, forcing an Edmonton timeout.

After that timeout, Edmonton scored a triple and a two-pointer to force a timeout. While it became a back-and-forth affair, East rose to the occasion and gave his team three three-pointers en route to a 13-6 run to close out the first half.

If that second quarter was indicative of the “resilience” Nick Hornsby mentioned at halftime, it wasn’t just their star player answering. At the end of the first half, Edmonton took the wind out of Scarborough’s sails as Hornsby closed out with two made free throws after getting a deflection on the defensive end, gaining possession of the ball, and drawing a foul from David Walker. Right before the buzzer, Isiah Osborne got a block on Terquavion Smith that would deflate even the most confident of scorers.

Edmonton built up a 15-point halftime lead, but they had to regain their lead as they came back sleepwalking at the start of the second half.

It took a 13-0 run, punctuated by Smith’s back-to-back threes to force an Edmonton timeout. Scarborough was suddenly inched with two points with a lot more basketball to be played.

“I mean I wanted to. I should have, honestly,” Edmonton head coach Jordan Baker said about how he should have taken a timeout earlier. “But we want our guys to work through some things…We’re a resilient group.”

Smith made four three-pointers for Scarborough, and his squad was trying to overtake Edmonton. A tussle between Hornsby and Joirdon Nicholas made the third a chippy one as the game built up to a physical climax.

Edmonton displayed resilience, however, by closing out the third quarter, just as they did in the first and second. Mike Nuga hit a three-pointer and Osborne hit a corner three after getting a pass from the opposite wing.

The very first bucket at the start of the fourth was Osborne immediately hitting another three-pointer to give Edmonton a 11-point buffer. Edmonton closed out the game and never let their fourth-quarter lead get closer than eight points.

Osborne now has 50 regular season steals and the defensive player had a strong offensive performance tonight. “He’s a guy that does a lot of the intangibles. He executes our game plan very well, he was disruptive against their top guys all night,” Coach Baker said.

While Edmonton relies on the sum of its parts, East, the fourth-leading scorer in the league, had 27 points, shooting six-for-nine from downtown. East came into this game shooting a miraculous 50% (30-for-60) from three-point range.

Keon Ambrose Hylton, who is second in the league in field goal percentage, hit a big three-pointer in the fourth quarter and finished with 11 points on five-for-eight shooting.

Scarborough’s Williams, the league’s leading scorer, had 17 tonight.

“It was a roller coaster,” Scarborough head coach Mike De Giorgio said after tonight’s game. Scarborough’s hunt for consistency continues after blowing out last year’s CEBL champions, defeating Winnipeg on the road, and losing tonight. “I thought our energy to start the game wasn’t as high. We weren’t locked into our coverages,” he said.

Box score

https://www.cebl.ca/game?id=2600623

Up next for both teams

The Edmonton Stingers (7-6) host the third of their four-game homestand against the Montreal Alliance (5-5) on Canada Day. Scarborough (7-6) will move further west to face the league’s best Vancouver Bandits (9-3) on the same day as well.

Next CEBL action

There will be a total of three Canada Day games on Tuesday, July 1. Aside from the two mentioned above, the Winnipeg Sea Bears (5-7) will face the Ottawa BlackJacks (5-6) in the nation’s capital. For the full 2025 CEBL schedule and up-to-date results, please visit cebl.ca/games.

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