Sea Bears stumble to first home loss against struggling Surge

This time, the Winnipeg Sea Bears couldn’t find that late-game magic. Winnipeg’s pro hoops squad has found a way to the finish line so many times this season it almost [...]

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After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks. This time, the Winnipeg Sea Bears couldn’t find that late-game magic. Winnipeg’s pro hoops squad has found a way to the finish line so many times this season it almost became expected that they would overcome their shooting woes and gut out another imperfect victory, but on Sunday afternoon at Canada Life Centre, a different fate prevailed.

Despite a struggling club entering their den, the Sea Bears fell flat in the second half of an 85-80 loss to the Calgary Surge. Winnipeg’s hopes of clinching a fourth-consecutive berth in the Canadian Elite Basketball League playoffs were put on hold for at least one more game, and their perfect streak at home ended at seven as it dropped to 11-6. Adding insult to injury, it was former Sea Bear Armani Chaney — who was released on June 15 — who iced the game on a step-back three-pointer.

Chaney finished with 20 points, as the now 4-13 Surge look to salvage their season. “We just lost,” said Teddy Allen, who led all players with 28 points and added seven rebounds. “I honestly thought we were gonna win.

We had the ball, one possession to win, and I turned it over. We still should have won, but we didn’t.” Allen’s costly turnover in Target Score Time was preceded by a strange series of events.

With a target score of 83, Calgary missed the first of three consecutive free throws to put the game away. The latter two shots were awarded after the Surge corralled a rebound, and as Adonis Arms went up for the put-back, the arena’s horn inexplicably went off, putting the game in timeout. Officials also deemed that Arms was fouled as the horn sounded, which put the Surge back on the line.

Head coach Mike Raimbault was incensed at the untimely horn, which may have negated his club’s chance to regain possession and get back up the court. The fact that Isiah Osborne was charged with a foul also left him confused. Raimbault said he did not receive an explanation after the game about the horn, but it didn’t matter since the Sea Bears blew their chance to put the game away on their final possession.

“We can’t change the outcome of how it went. I’m not sure why the horn went off. I think it was unfortunate timing, but I’m not sure I’ll get an explanation at all,” he said.

“I think when you lose a close game, there’s a lot of things that impact the outcome. Obviously, we had a poor third quarter. There’s a lot of possessions that we’ll look at and say, ‘Hey, we would like to make better choices.’

So it’s hard to put it on one situation. I mean, we put ourselves in a spot where we needed to fight and play from behind, and when you do that, sometimes it catches you.” Indeed, it did.

After owning a 47-35 lead at halftime, the Surge screamed out of the locker room to the tune of a 26-3 run to take an 11-point lead. The charge was led by Chaney, who scored 10 points, including two of Calgary’s six triples in the frame. It was unlike any quarter played by the Western Conference-leading Sea Bears this season.

The basket looked like it had a lid on one end as Calgary outscored Winnipeg 36-14 in the frame, while Allen was held to a single point. “Without watching it back, I can’t say for sure,” Raimbault said of what went wrong in the quarter. “Obviously the score went wrong for us, but it just wasn’t a strong quarter for us in a lot of aspects.”

While Winnipeg finished the quarter strong and carried that momentum into the fourth quarter, where it eventually regained the lead for a stretch, the club’s shooting woes eventually caught up to it. The Sea Bears fired at just a 33 per cent clip from the field, including making just six of their 27 attempts from beyond the arc. The hosts scored just 33 points in the second half, as they looked anything but the prolific offence that has taken the league by storm this summer.

“Basketball, some games you’re going to miss shots. Some games you’re going to make a lot of shots,” said Emmanuel Akot, who had six points and nine rebounds. “I think that’s why our calling card is our defence, and I think we could have done a much better job today, but we’ll look at the film and get better.”

The silver lining for the Sea Bears is that Trey McGowens (12 points) and Trevon Scott (two points) returned to action after sitting out one game due to respective lower-body ailments. The club’s playoff hopes are also still well within reach with seven games remaining in the fading regular-season schedule. Winnipeg, which began its busiest stretch of the campaign and will play three more games this week, will get a few days to rest before making the short trip to Saskatoon to face the Mamba (7-9) on Wednesday (8:30 p.m.).

Their clinching scenario will once again be win-and-in. “I don’t think our process really changes at all. We’re gonna obviously look at the game and try to continue learning some lessons that are going to be important for us moving forward.

We’re going to prep for our road trip, and we’re going to go play the next game,” said Raimbault. “I think (that’s) one positive about just kind of taking everything a day at a time and looking at what you need to do is we’re not over-evaluating a win or a loss. We’re looking at every single possession and just trying to be a little bit better, and there’s certainly lots of things that we could have done better tonight.”

winnipegfreepress.com/joshuafreysam Josh Frey-Sam reports on sports and business at the Free Press. Josh got his start at the paper in 2022, just weeks after graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College.

He reports primarily on amateur teams and athletes in sports. Read more about Josh. Every piece of reporting Josh produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism.

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