Edmonton Stingers blowout Saskatchewan Rattlers 89-70 to move ahead in playoff race
Nick Hornsby’s near triple-double helped the Edmonton Stingers (8-9) stay ahead of the Saskatchewan Rattlers (6-10) in the western conference playoff race with a 89-70 win at the SaskTel Centre on Saturday night.
Hornsby finished one assist shy of a triple-double, recording 16 points, 12 rebounds and 9 assists.
“Tonight he played with great pace,” Edmonton head coach Jordan Baker said after the game. “It looked like he was moving at a different tempo than everybody in the first half, playing fast and making quick decisions.”
Tonight’s game was the second half of a home-and-home series between these two teams. Saskatchewan, led by 37 points by Justin Wright-Foreman, took a one-point victory over the Stingers in Edmonton on Thursday night.
This evening, though, Wright-Foreman struggled to find much consistency with his shot as Edmonton defenders locked in on him early and often. The Queen’s, New York native, averaging close to 30 points per game entering the evening, managed only 18 points on 20 per cent shooting from the field.
Saskatchewan shot 31 per cent from the field as a team and made only nine field goals in the first half. Edmonton finished with a 45 per cent field goal percentage and shot over 50 per cent from inside the arch.
“Credit to our team, we regrouped and understood that we needed to play a different brand of basketball and made things a little difficult for them defensively,” Baker said.
Edmonton’s Geoffrey James was the primary defender on Wright-Foreman throughout the whole game, and Hornsby said the team’s focus on him played a major part in the victory.
“First off, [Wright-Foreman] is a great player and a great scorer,” Hornsby said. “It was a unit-mindset coming into the game, knowing he’s a great player, packing the paint and doing what we can against him.”
Isiah Osborne led all scorers with 26 points and converted five three pointers on the night for the Stingers. Saskatchewan’s Mike Nuga finished with 18 points, tying Wright-Foreman for the team-high tonight, and played his customary sparkplug position off the bench tonight.
The game started with both teams struggling to find any sort of groove offensively in the first quarter.
Saskatchewan started 0-5 from the field before Marquis Collins ended the drought with a three-pointer off a swing pass just outside the arch. Edmonton, meanwhile, converted only three shots themselves in the first five minutes of the opening quarter.
With the clock winding down in the end of the frame, Munis Tutu hauled in a Anthony Tsegakele missed free throw, raced down the court, and found an open Shane Gibson who knocked down a three at the buzzer to give the Stingers a 18-11 lead after one.
In the second, the Stingers started to build on their lead. The Stingers upped their field goal percentage to over 40 per cent and scored six points off four Saskatchewan turnovers.
Hornsby was well on his way to a double-double in the first two quarters, scoring seven points to go with six rebounds and five assists. Osborne recorded 11 of his game-high 23 points in the first half.
Despite growing their lead to 20 by the end of the frame, Wright-Foreman found a cutting D’Andre Bernard with less than a second to go in the half to cut Edmonton’s lead to 18 and inject some life into the Rattlers crowd.
“We do have resiliency in that locker room,” Rattlers interim head coach Tanner Massey said. “We have faced it all season and this is another page in our book in the season.”
Hornsby then scored six points after halftime, but the Rattlers found some momentum late, going on an 11-0 run at the end of the quarter to cut into the deficit. Osborne ended the run with a three that bounced off the rim and backboard before going in, however, and the Stingers took a 61-45 lead heading into the fourth.
Saskatchewan would try to use another run to come within striking distance. Nuga knocked down a jumper to make it a 17 point game with just under eight minutes to play, but that would be the closest the Rattlers would come to pulling off a late comeback.
The Stingers responded with a 12-0 run of their own, before sealing the game with an Osborne three in target score time.
With the win, Edmonton stays ahead of Saskatchewan in the race for a western conference play-in spot, and match the second-place Calgary Surge with eight wins on the season.
The western-conference leading Winnipeg Sea Bears, who were off tonight, also became the second team in the CEBL to clinch a spot in the playoffs with the Rattlers loss.
Today’s game was the first of four straight road games to cap off the regular season for the Stingers. Edmonton will return to action on July 21 in Vancouver.
Moving forward, Nuga said, the Rattlers will need to focus on physicality to get back into the playoff race.
“We’re at a point in the season where it’s crunch time and we just need to do what we got to do and have that sense of urgency,” Nuga said.
Saskatchewan will look to rebound on Monday night against the Brampton Honey Badgers.
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