“Today was kind of one of those days.”
Dexter William Jr was certainly not wrong.
His assessment in describing a 114-102 Sudbury Five loss at the hands of the KW Titans felt quite appropriate – well maybe except for the fact that this contest was tied 79-79 heading to the fourth and final quarter of play Sunday afternoon at the Sudbury Arena.
In fact, the second half of the two-game set that would see the NBLC (National Basketball League of Canada) rivals meeting twice in a span of 18 hours – the Five took the Saturday night contest by a final score of 109-92 – clearly teetered back and forth.
The visitors were leading 25-21 after twelve minutes of play with the Five pulling ahead 50-49 at the half. Even the fourth quarter that would see KW outscore Sudbury 35-23 featured at least a pair of leads for the home side.
It often seemed like that the team which has won only three of twelve conference games were not a whole lot more interested in grabbing this contest and running with it than were the league-leading 11-5 representatives from the nickel city.
“It’s not like we did anything super bad and it’s not like we did anything super good,” said Sudbury head coach Logan Stutz, also doing a good job of capturing the moment. “We were just kind of out there.”
Perhaps it was more of an accumulation of many small factors that would allow the Titans to put an end to a seven game winning streak for the Five. It’s fair to say that the energy was not on par with a very solid Sudbury effort the night before.
“I’m not making excuses, but it’s definitely difficult,” said Williams Jr, addressing the rapid turnaround from winding down from a win the night before to being back on the court the following afternoon. “But shout-out to them; they won, they took advantage of us.”
As coach and athlete would quickly acknowledge, the limited time between games was the same for both teams.
“It was a tough one tonight – but all credit to KW; they deserved to win that game,” said Stutz. “We tried to fight at times. We had little spurts, little sparks, but we just couldn’t push through a threshold and break through with a good six to eight minutes.”
And the locals were without Jeremy Harris, the man who tops the NBLC scoring parade, averaging 23.7 points per game. “We’ve got a deep team and if somebody is down, somebody else picks them up,” said Williams Jr. “It was one of those nights; well one of those mornings, one of those days.”
And it wasn’t like the fouls costs the Five dearly, as the team limited their personal infractions to just 16 on the game, including only two in the second quarter and three in the third – though Stutz did allow for the fact that this few fouls may be a little problematic.
“It does kind of measure your aggressiveness,” he said. “We did not take a lot of fouls and some of it might have been maybe lazy defense, maybe our energy wasn’t quite there, so we weren’t even putting ourselves in a situation where we could foul.”
“I will give the refs credit tonight,” Stutz added. “That was probably one of the better reffed games that we have had in a long time. I’ve been tough on refs, but give them credit tonight – that was all on us.”
And, in part, it was a function of one very impressive and timely KW run in the final ten minutes or so of the contest. KW showcased a highly diversified offense on the day, with no less than six different players hitting double digits for the visitors: Jalen Hayes (23); Mike Poole (20); Joel Kindred (18); Sam Akano (15); Samuel Kearns (14); Jaquan Lightfoot (11).
With Jeremy Harris not in the lineup – there was no word on whether he was injured in the Saturday night win, though Stutz did not the team was dealing with a few banged up bodies – the Five looked to find a few lineup combinations that might work.
Curtis Hollis came off the bench to contribute a team high 22 points for Sudbury, with starters Braylon Rayson, J.D. Miller and A.J. Mosby chipping in with 18, 17 and 16 points respectively.
“I was trying to find the best lineup that was going to go and give us a spark,” suggested Stutz. “We had one in the second quarter, but that was about all that we had. After that, I was searching and we just couldn’t find it tonight” - which, obviously, is going to happen occasionally to any team – even a very good one.
Thankfully, perhaps, the Sudbury Five have just one game scheduled in the 11 days, back at home next Saturday and welcoming the Windsor Express to town.
“We’ve got to physically get right – we have a couple of injuries that we have to look at,” said Stutz as his team also lost the services of newcomer Dave Bell, clearly in some discomfort and leaving the game early. “But we really have to get back to playing hard basketball.”
“When we play hard basketball, it’s good. Everyone is having fun – and that’s big for our team.”
