Honey Badgers, Rattlers look to bump slumps in 1st matchup of season

The Brampton Honey Badgers and Saskatchewan Rattlers have taken nearly parallel paths during the 2024 season.

The Rattlers started the season strongly with three straight wins at home, but they’ve since dropped the first two of a three-game road trip.

The Honey Badgers, meanwhile, opened their campaign with two consecutive victories, but they’re currently riding a three-game losing streak.

One of those winless droughts will end Friday when the teams square off at Brampton’s CAA Centre at 7:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. MT. Live streaming coverage is available on CEBL+ and TSN+.

Saskatchewan’s latest loss came at the hands of previously winless Calgary on Wednesday as the Surge started the game on a 12-0 run and never looked back.

Rattlers head coach Larry Abney said afterwards that his team was outworked.

“Each player has to look themselves in the mirror. We didn’t execute that first half. They took us out of our stuff. They just played harder than us,” he said.

With the game out of reach entering Target Score Time, Abney chose to leave two of his top players, guards Jalen Harris and Elijah Harkless, on the bench.

Perhaps the extra rest will lead to a faster start against Brampton, which is coming off a hard-fought 92-90 home loss against the Winnipeg Sea Bears.

After surprising many across the league with their 2-0 start, the Honey Badgers have fallen back to the pack, though the Eastern Conference has proven far weaker than the West over the season’s first quarter. Even at 2-3 with a minus-39 point different, Brampton sat second in the conference entering play on Thursday.

Friday’s battle marks the first of a home-and-home set with the teams set to meet again next Wednesday in Saskatchewan. Brampton also hosts Scarborough on Sunday in between.

Key matchup

The game features two of the CEBL’s top five scorers in Harris and Brampton big man Zane Waterman.

Harris, who averages 24.6 points per game, is a probing guard who can also hurt defences from deep, as evidenced by his 41.7 three-point percentage.

Waterman, meanwhile, does most of his work down low, earning the second most trips to the line per game at 8.2 while averaging exactly 20 points per contest.

Harris’ and Waterman’s styles are surprisingly similar, though. Harris isn’t far behind Waterman in free-throw shooting, making the third most shots from the charity stripe per game in the league.

And Waterman can stretch it out as he attempts five three-pointers per game and makes them at a 40 per cent clip.

How the defences go about slowing the pair of dynamic scorers may go a long way in determining which team ends its losing skid.

Milestone watch

·       Saskatchewan’s Harris is four points away from 500 for his career, regular season only

·       Saskatchewan’s Cody John is 11 points away from 500 in his career, including playoffs

2023 season series

Justin Wright-Foreman scored a franchise-high 39 points as the Rattlers edged the Honey Badgers 86-84 in the teams’ lone matchup last season.

- CEBL -

About the CEBL

A league created by Canadians for Canadians with a mission to develop Canadian players, coaches, sports executives, and referees, the CEBL boasts the highest percentage of Canadian players of any pro league in the country with 73% of its 2023 rosters being Canadian. Players bring experience from the NBA, NBA G League, top international pro leagues, the Canadian National team program, and top NCAA programs as well as U SPORTS. Fourteen players have signed NBA contracts following a CEBL season, and numerous CEBL players attend NBA G League training camps every year. The CEBL season runs from May through August. More information about the CEBL is available at CEBL.ca and @cebleague on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook & YouTube.