In the final moments of a season opener that appeared all but wrapped up for the Fraser Valley Bandits, it all came down to one last point. What was once a 22-point lead at the start of the Elam Ending quickly evaporated to just a 10 point lead within minutes. On the sidelines, head coach Kyle Julius continued to preach calmness to his players.
“Execute, execute,” he said during a stoppage of play in the game’s closing moments.
A slight misjudgment during the dying minutes of the fourth quarter gave the Edmonton Stingers an opening to come back after Julius opted to take a whistle by fouling. With the time remaining, a pause would force the game into the Elam Ending and give the Bandits a chance to close out the win. Upon reflection, however, the strategy was a mistake.
“When you have such a big lead, there’s no point in letting them score on another possession. So, we tried to foul, and then I didn’t know the next foul was a bonus situation (for the Stingers),” Julius said.
“And then our guys relaxed in Elam, they totally let up. It was good, it was good teaching. It’s nice when you can go through a teaching moment and win at the same time because most of the teaching occurs when you lose.”
The call was out-of-bounds against the Stingers and Bandits guard Marek Klassen was responsible for inbounding the ball to set up a potential game-winner. The pass was inbounded right to a wide-open Jahenns Manigat outside the arc. Standing in front of an onlooking Bandits bench, Manigat quickly glanced down at the floor, composing himself, before sinking a dagger three-point shot to seal the 113-100 victory.
“He didn’t play in the fourth quarter because that group was playing quite well, so I was saving him for the Elam,” Julius said on Manigat’s 16-point performance. “And then he comes in the Elam and then coincidentally he makes the last shot. I can’t say enough about Jahenns, to be honest.”
The celebration remained brief – a few fist pumps from Manigat and an emphatic yell from Cameron Forte after everyone had cleared the court. More importantly, the win marked the official transition into a new era of Bandits basketball, one which is fueled by defence, shooting, and an unrelenting motor to compete.
“My dad kind of raised me on the game that way. I coached that way. All of our teams, we try and find that switch, that toughness switch,” Julius said. “I want to be able to rely on that, not shooting and other things.”
As if coming into a new season with a completely restructured roster and coaching staff after finishing the previous season with a 4-16 record wasn’t enough motivation for the Bandits, it was the noise from people outside the locker room, which caught Julius’ attention.
The team he handpicked was too small, prone to mismatches, and was pegged by everyone to finish last or second-last coming into the CEBL Summer Series. All of it served as motivation.
“I always took offense to that because I watched the CEBL last year. I didn’t see any really big teams or anything like that, so I was confused, and then I started to take it personally, and it became a chip on our shoulder,” Julius said.
Julius expected nothing less but maximum effort from his players against the Stingers and execute they did. Forte led the team with a game-high 28 points, using his assertive 6-foot-7 frame to grab offensive rebounds and work against defenders in the paint. Kyle Johnson, who put up 19 points, set the pace from the start after sprinting for a loose ball on the opening tip-off and laying up a smooth finger roll to take the lead, one the Bandits never looked back on.
“We’ve got a bunch of hungry dogs on our team that are going to compete. We’re never going to give up,” Johnson said. “And even though camp has been short, we’ve been getting after it, man. We’re really ready for this and hungry for this.”
Marek Klassen remains the only player on the current roster from that 2019 Fraser Valley team, which finished its inaugural season on a six-game losing streak and posted the worst record in the league.
For every team that year – nonetheless, an entire league – it was a feeling-out process of figuring out how the season would play out. Klassen never felt stressed about the lack of results on the court. In their final appearance of the season, they lost 95-85 to the eventual second-place Stingers. They were a team that couldn’t seem to close-out games when they mattered, many of them going into overtime.
“As a professional, you gotta take it one day at a time. I wasn’t there for the full season, neither were the rest of our guys,” Klassen said.
“So coming back here, it’s a lot of pride playing for my home city, and I think that we’ve instilled that same thing within this group. And the unfinished business sort of thing is here, so every team is circled on our schedule. We’re ready.”
With their previous loss against the Stingers avenged, the Bandits now set their sights on July 28 against the defending champion Saskatchewan Rattlers, who also won their season-opener against the Niagara River Lions in impressive fashion. Julius tempered expectations by saying how he believes no team will go undefeated this summer. Unbeaten or not, one thing has been made clear: these are not the same Bandits from before.