Vancouver Bandits Drop Home Tilt Versus Edmonton Stingers in Sell-out at Langley Events Centre

Something had to give on Saturday night. 

The Edmonton Stingers brought their perfect 5-0 road record to Langley Events Centre where the Vancouver Bandits looked to extend their unblemished 6-0 mark on their home court as the two top teams in the Canadian Elite Basketball League squared off. 

In the end, it was the visitors extending their road winning streak with a 107-88 win in front of a sell-out crowd of 4,538 fans as the Bandits celebrated their Filipino Heritage Game. 

The result leaves both teams with identical 8-3 records with the season series at one victory apiece with a crucial third and final meeting set for July 5 in Edmonton. 

“I don’t think that was a regular loss. I don’t want to take anything away from Edmonton … that was the Vancouver Bandits beating the Vancouver Bandits,” said Vancouver coach and general

manager Kyle Julius. 

“Our lack of emotional resilience is definitely something we have to deal with, so you can take that away,” he added when asked what the team can learn from its most lopsided defeat of the season. 

The Bandits entered the contest boasting both the league’s top offence (93.0 points per game) and stingiest defence (81.2 points per game) but aside from a back-and-forth first quarter which featured a pair of ties and eight lead changes, it was all Edmonton as the Stingers nearly reached triple digits even before Target Score Time, and handing the Bandits a 19-point defeat. 

The bread-and-butter of Vancouver’s success through the first 10 games has been their outside game, but their shooters could not get on track against the Stingers, especially in the first half as they hit on just four of their 20 3-point attempts (20 per cent). 

“We missed a lot of good looks. I actually thought that in the first half that was some of the most open threes we have had all year, to be honest. We just didn’t make it,” Julius said. 

Despite the cold shooting opening 20 minutes, the Bandits were down nine going into the second half and trimmed the deficit to three points with a 5-0 spurt to open the third. But Edmonton would respond with a 13-0 run of their own. The closest Vancouver would get from that point was within seven later in the period. 

“Coach has been preaching all week that this is effectively a mid-season playoff game for us. We felt like we deserved it. We had to come out here and show it on their home court,” said Edmonton’s Brody Clarke. “We stuck to what we came here to do: we stayed gritty, we stayed out of all the ticky-tacky stuff.” 

Clarke led his team with 27 points and seven rebounds and the Stingers bench outscored Vancouver’s reserves 47-16. 

“We play a team style of basketball and it is going to be someone else’s night every single night if we are doing the right things on offence. It happened to be me today,” Clarke said. 

“It is what we talk about from the start of the year; we want to make sure we can roll with 10-12 guys on a nightly basis.” 

That depth is surely to be tested over the next week and a half as Saturday’s contest was the first of six games in 11 days for Edmonton, with travel needed to Edmonton on July 1 for a home game and then in Winnipeg two days later. The Stingers then head back to the Alberta capital two days later for a rematch with the Bandits in the game to decide the season series, which is the first tiebreaker should they end up with an identical record with Vancouver. 

While Clarke had 27 points, Michael Nuga added 17, Elijah Miller had 13 and Trey McGowens chipped in 11. For the Bandits, Nick Ward finished with 29-20 of which came in the first half – while

Zach Copeland had 17 and Tazé Moore scored 15 to go along with seven rebounds and seven assists. 

After hitting on just 20 per cent of their three-point attempts in the first half, the Bandits were 9-for-14 after halftime, a 64 per cent clip. They finished at 38.2 per cent, which is right around their season average. 

“We know their top four can put the ball in the basket from inside and outside. They have a really diversified attack, they run some good actions,” said Edmonton coach and general manager Jordan Baker, who stressed that his team will need to do a better job in the upcoming rematch, citing Ward’s 20 first-half points as just one area to address. 

Unfortunately for the Bandits, Moore fouled out of the game near the end of the third quarter while Ward was ejected following his second technical foul shortly before Target Score Time. 

As a team, Vancouver received four technical fouls and 29 total fouls compared to 23 fouls for Edmonton. The Stingers also had 31 free throw attempts compared to the Bandits’ 20. 

Vancouver is right back in action on Canada Day as they host the Niagara River Lions at Langley Events Centre. Game time on Monday will be 5 p.m. PT and will also be broadcast nationally on TSN. 

The Bandits will wear a special edition jersey featuring iconic imagery of Canadian hero Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope. Proceeds from the sale of each jersey will be donated to the Terry Fox Foundation in support of cancer research across Canada. 

The jersey is available in both adult and youth sizes for pre-order at this link while a limited selection of replica jerseys will be available for sale at the Bandits’ Canada Day game.