If one didn’t know any better, a fan of the Sudbury Five might think that coach Logan Stutz and his staff put together a game plan for a two-game set against the struggling TBL (The Basketball League) franchise representing the Academic d’Alma that reads as follows: let the visitors hang around long enough to keep the game close at half, crank it up a notch and blow them out in quarter three before putting it into cruise control for the final twelve minutes of play.
Obviously, that wasn’t necessarily how Stutz drew it up on the blackboard, but the similarities between the two recent encounters were eerie.
Up 52-47 at the half on Sunday, Sudbury dominated the return to the court following the break, outscoring the Quebec-based crew 33-13 in quarter three en route to a 114-85 victory. By contrast, a 58-53 half-time lead on Saturday for the Five blossomed into a 101-80 advantage heading to the fourth, with the scoreboard reading 135-101 in the end.
The home side were leading 39-36 in game two with just over five minutes to play in the second quarter when Stutz was assessed a technical foul, one that could be classified as far more of the planned variety, it would seem.
“I wanted a technical,” acknowledged the generally pretty affable, albeit intense Midwesterner. “I wanted to earn that technical to get that spark going because I don’t think the game was going the way that we wanted – and I hoped that would change it.”
“I think it did a little bit – but it was really that third quarter that got it going.”
And where some might envision a need to peel the paint off the wall with his words to the team at half-time, that was not at all what was required, according to Stutz.
“Our guys had some time at the half to look each other in the eye, to sit down and talk. The coaching staff comes in and gives them a couple of things, but they are pros. It was really just a matter of taking a few minutes to catch our breath and do what we needed to do.”
“They know.”
Few fit that description better than 6’10” centre Jasonn Hannibal, a 34 year-old native of Mississauga whose international basketball experience includes stops in Mexico, Slovania, Hong Kong, the United States and Canada.
“I’ve been playing pro a long time; this is my tenth year,” said the talkative Canadian who netted eight points on the afternoon while also hauling in eight rebounds. “At this point in my career, if you put me in, I know what I need to do.”
“I know my strengths, I know my weaknesses. I just try and play to my strengths and clog up the middle, block some shots, try and score in the post and set some screens so guys can get open.”
The Five would feature no less than six players reaching double digits in the form of A.J. Mosby Jr (19), Braylon Rayson (17), Duane Notice (15), Montell McRae (15), J.D. Miller (14) and Jeremy Harris (13), while Academie d’Alma countered with a quartet led by workhorse Marc-André Fortin (26), former Five forward Tyrell Gumbs-Frater (16), as well as Lansana Nwosu (12) and Ruben Lybbert (11).
And while the visitors from La Belle Province were not about to be mistaken for any of the trio of NBLC rivals that Sudbury faces far more often, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in the mind of the big man.
“Because of their style of play, they cut a lot, they move around,” said Hannibal. “We have to communicate and have each other’s back on defense a lot more. With some teams, it’s a lot more one on one, so more on the person guarding the ball.”
Winning just one of their first eight league games in the TBL this year, it might seem like a foregone conclusion that Sudbury would eventually run Alma right out of the rink – though that wasn’t an assessment that was shared by coach Stutz.
“They have two or three players that are very good players,” stated Stutz. “We had to focus on shutting them down and I thought we did a much better job of doing that today than yesterday. Some of their kids that we had not scouted played really well and their coach always had a good set coming out of timeouts.”
“They weren’t as bad as maybe some people might think. They just don’t have the depth that they need and they run out of gas.”
The Five have now won four in a row and 11 of their last 12 games in improving their overall record to 21-5. The team is back at home next weekend for another two game weekend set, this time welcoming the Jamestown Jackals of the TBL to town.
