As opening nights tend to go, the Lakeland Rustlers saw a bit of everything as they kicked off their Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference men’s basketball regular season at home Friday (Oct. 17).
The Rustlers roared back in the last five minutes of regulation to force overtime, during which they gained a five-point lead before losing 95-92 to the Briercrest Clippers in a memorable game decided at the buzzer.
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“We’re a team that fights through,” said Lakeland coach Sheray Thomas. “We fought enough to get to overtime. Just didn’t execute down the stretch, made a couple of mistakes, which really hurt us.
“(The Clippers) are a good team, as far as they’re really disciplined. They’re going to execute … when they have shooters all around, which makes it tough. If you rotate defensively, they’re passing to shooters, and they’re knocking (shots) down.”
Briercrest’s Gabe Vig was Mr. Clutch in the last 10 seconds of overtime. He sank three free throws to even the score and won the game with his buzzer-beating three-pointer.
Down by 10 points with six minutes left in regulation time, the Rustlers clawed their way back, sparked by three-pointers from Bahaeddin Salma and David Dimaano, along with dogged work and sharpshooting in tight range.
“Those were big shots,” Thomas said. “Then we got two or three rebounds at the end to finally get it in.
“But we’ve got to execute better defensively and offensively. We gave them too many cushions — right at the beginning of the game and, after halftime, they had another little cushion.”
Briercrest, which led 43-40 at halftime, went up by as many as 16 points before Lakeland rallied in the late going.
The Clippers regrouped a few times themselves, coming back from a five-point deficit near the regulation buzzer and again in the extra five minutes.
Both teams returned to action Saturday night as Lakeland scored a 94-76 victory over the visiting Medicine Hat Rattlers, while Briercrest lost 104-87 to the Keyano Huskies at Fort McMurray.
“This league is tough,” said the Rustlers’ Thomas, the ACAC’s North coach of the year last season. “Anytime you lace ’em up and get out there, there’s good teams.”
He believes the relatively experienced Rustlers squad is still trying to find its identity this season.
“I think that’s still to be determined,” Thomas said after Friday’s season-opener. “In the pre-season, we played with a lot of grit. Played with some grit here today, but I think the jitters of regular-season play got to us a little bit. We pumped ourselves up a little bit too much, and some shots that we usually make, we were missing. Some plays we usually make we were missing.
“That’s pretty much it. I think the bright lights got to us a little bit today.”
While they had some vocal support from fellow students and other fans, the Rustlers’ played their home-opener in front of about 300 fans, a smaller crowd than the preceding game between the Lakeland and Briercrest women.
“I think we’ve got to try to get the word out there a little bit more,” Thomas said of attracting more fans. “Our games are usually exciting. Last season, we had a ton of games that were single-point games, similar to today.
“For my sake (as a coach), we’re trying to get some big wins. Don’t want too many more close ones. But it is exciting basketball, for sure.”
The Rustlers are banking on the collegiate experience of players like Bahaeddin Salma, David Dimaano, Taleh Wade, Matthew Bryant and Seth Johnson. Not to mention Jordan Horobetz-Simpson, who scored a game-high 28 points on Friday.
“There’s a lot of change from last season, but we’ve got some experienced players,” Thomas said.
“We have some veteran players. We’re definitely leaning on those guys. The other guys are pretty young, so we’re trying to bring them along.”
In the Rustlers’ season-opener, Wade posted 19 points, Salma netted 13 and Dimaano had 11.
This weekend, Lakeland plays a home-and-home series with the Concordia Thunder, with games Friday in Lloydminster and Saturday at Edmonton.Concordia is off to an 0-2 start, losing 85-64 to the SAIT Trojans and 78-62 to the Lethbridge Kodiaks, respectively.
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