Bandits Take Down Calgary to cap off undefeated Home Opener Weekend
It wasn’t as clean as they would have liked, but the Vancouver Bandits will take the result, another victory, this time a 111-101 win over the Calgary Surge.
The Canadian Elite Basketball League game was played Sunday afternoon on Envision Financial Court at Langley Events Centre, with Vancouver improving to 3-1 while the winless Surge fell to 0-3.
“It was really messy. Again, another game adding a new player right before is not easy,” admitted Bandits coach Kyle Julius.
The new player this time was Jarkel Joiner, who most recently played for the Toronto Raptors G League affiliate, Raptors 905, and signed with Vancouver on Saturday.
Despite limited time with his new teammates, Joiner did not look out of place, finishing with 22 points and seven assists. He was one of three Bandits to score 20-plus points alongside Jaelen House (27 points, nine assists) and Tyrese Samuel (21 points, 10 rebounds). Samuel’s dunk –which would have been an and-1 opportunity – ended the game in Target Score Time.
“Oh man, it was fun, man. Shout out to God, giving me energy to come here and do what I do, my Lord and Savior. But the guys gave me energy from the jump, and I got acclimated, welcomed me with open arms and I don't know what I can do as a player,” Joiner said. “Coach gave me confidence, the players gave me confidence, and it was fun.”
“(The message was) just be me, have high energy. I play with emotion, just like Jaelen (House); I can score and I can guard, that’s what they told me to do and that’s what I did.”
The Bandits led for all but five minutes of the game and never trailed by more than three points.
“I felt like we had a sense of urgency from the jump, so that was good,” Joiner said.
“We just played a ton of one-on-one basketball. That's not really who we are or what we're about. So, the good news is we have guys that can really play one-on-one basketball at a high level … we've got to kind of find a way to just get organized,” Julius said.
“We just need to start playing a little bit more together and I think the sky's the limit, to be honest, because to score 111 points and not really feel great about the game is a good thing at this point.”
Julius especially wants to see improvement defensively.
“I think we should be holding teams in the 80s; I thought we were a little bit sluggish and just not totally connected,” he explained.
“It’s not like we're playing bad defense because we're a bad defensive team. I think we're playing bad defense because chemistry is not there yet and the rules and the understanding. There's no real continuity from last year, so all of our rules and terminology is still trying to be digested.”
Calgary was led by Evan Gilyard II’s game-high 31 points, while Olumide Alelodun added 19. But it was not enough as the Surge’s difficult start to the season continued.
Calgary coach Perry Huang was complimentary of Vancouver’s talent.
“They just have a lot of tough shot-makers — and in a basketball sense, you want to force tough one-on-one 2’s and tough one-on-one pull-up 3’s, but they have the talent to hit those shots, and we didn’t necessarily have the counter to those,” Huang said.
“I think just the overall talent level of what they had just kind of overwhelmed us in the end.”
UP NEXT: The Bandits head out on an eastern road swing, playing three games in five days with stops in Niagara (May 29), Brampton (May 30) and Ottawa (June 2).
The team’s next home game is June 6 in Kelowna against the Saskatoon Mamba at Prospera Place as part of Kelowna HOOPFEST.
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