Game Day Recap: July 11th

The River Lions finally chased away their fourth quarter demons.

Thursday night in their first game in Abbotsford, the River Lions fought off a hungry Fraser Valley Bandits squad 104-94 in front of 1510 people.

“We knew how well Fraser Valley was playing heading into tonight,” said head coach Victor Raso.

“They’re a different team than they were at the beginning of the year. They beat three good teams (recently).”

After trailing 65-64 at the end of the third quarter, the River Lions shooting woke up.

The River Lions were on fire from behind the arc to close out this game on the road: Trae Bell-Haynes got the onslaught going for the River Lions with 3:36 left to close the gap to two, and Nem Mitrovic tied it up at 89 with a triple of his own. Ryan Anderson quickly followed that with a Reggie Miller-esque steal and three-pointer to give the River Lions the lead with 2:12 left.

Then Nem Mitrovic happened.

Mitrovic has been struggling with his shot recently and closed the final four and a half minutes with three three-pointers. The last one put the River Lions up four with 35 seconds left was the nail in the coffin. He finished with 11 points and three of five shooting from behind the arc.

“Nem (Mitrovic) for me was what I was so happy about for this game, because Nem has been struggling a little and he wasn’t playing that well,” Raso said. “With four and a half minutes to go…I turned to the coaches and said: ‘I’m either an idiot or the smartest person in the world.’ I put Nem in the game and Nem banged 3 threes in the last 4.5 minutes. He made some incredible plays for us.”

This game was much needed for Niagara, who, despite owning the number one seed, had some questions about their ability to win tough after their most recent loss.

“This was a massive win. This was essentially a playoff win,” Raso said. “This is exactly what we needed. We’ve been talking since that Edmonton game that we’re good at home but that doesn’t really matter because we’re going to have to win on the road. We were looking forward to this … and finally we broke through at the end.”

Looking closer at the details, Raso had a clever game-plan to stymie the Bandits offense: turn the CEBL’s leading assist man Marek Klassen into a scorer.

“We did try to make Klassen a scorer,” Raso mentioned. “It worked sometimes, it didn’t’ work others. At the beginning of the game we weren’t good enough off the ball… and he got off early. Eventually, we wore him down and he wasn’t able to make plays down the stretch. He was tired, he’s their main ball-handler.”

Klassen finished with 23 points, but was held scoreless in the final 5:45 of the game.

The River Lions were led in scoring by the “Kawhi Leonard of the CEBL”, June’s Player of the Month, Guillaume Boucard. Boucard finished the night with 25 points.

They also got tremendous production from Sam Muldrow, who followed up his 10-point game against Saskatchewan with a 16 point outing tonight.

The River Lions get a nine-day break before their next game, which is a home matchup against the Fraser Valley Bandits.

By Nicolas Bueno