Bandits Fall Short of Win in Creek's Return

MEGAN SWAIN/GATG

The return of Vancouver Bandits captain Mitch Creek almost resulted in a fairy tale ending with a monumental comeback, but ultimately the Scarborough Shooting Stars proved why they’re the ones at the top of the standings so far this season.

Creek’s return was a welcome surprise for many, given his comments following last season’s heartbreaking Western Conference Semi Finals loss, but Head Coach and General Manager Kyle Julius revealed that it’s been in the works for a while.

“Mitch and I [have] a good relationship, we speak all the time. It was literally just a matter of scheduling, you know. He's got a lot going on this summer, so yeah, I wanted him to come and play. He wanted to come and play. I thought he was awesome tonight, as he always was and is.”

The Bandits kicked Monday night’s game off with a solid first quarter that saw Miller Kopp dominate the court and leave Scarborough in the dust for the first few minutes.

As the quarter went on though it became quite clear that these two teams are incredibly well matched, trading buckets back and forth with well mapped out plays and great displays of chemistry between teammates. Creek and Notice joined forces for an electric passing sequence that felt as if no time had passed between this season and last season.

By the end of the first half though, Scarborough had just pulled ahead by 4 points thanks to front runner for this year’s MVP award Myles Powell who was far ahead of his teammates with 33 points by the end of the night.

The third quarter is ultimately where things started to fall apart for the home team. Emotions got the best of players, leading to their missteps in their game. Coach Julius 

“I thought we had some guys lose their cool, and I thought that it was like an implosion. I thought we were really immature in the third quarter, and thought that, like, really costed us the game, to be honest.”

One positive from the third though was Creek settling into his game again, pulling ahead of teammates Miller Kopp and Jalen House for points. The three of them along with Jarkel Joiner put up a solid amount of points each, showing hints of how unstoppable the Bandits could become with several different point producers once the team chemistry settles with Creek rejoining the team so late in the season. 

As the fourth quarter rolled around, the home team began to follow its captain’s lead and claw their way back in a matter of four minutes. Kopp and Creek 

In what was one of the most special moments of the night though, as Mitch Creek lined up for yet another free throw, MVP chants began to rain down on him throughout the LEC. The building may not have been at capacity for this Monday night game, but based solely on volume you wouldn’t have been able to tell. The chants did eventually die down into complete silence as Creek took and made the single shot before play continued.

Not long after that, Duane Notice tied the game at 99, just in time for one of the tightest Target Times of the Bandits season so far. Both teams traded equal baskets for a bit. Scarborough with three points first, with Vancouver immediately answering it. They continued to go back and forth until Vancouver had 105 points, while Scarborough had 106.

At the very end, it came down to a scrambled attempt by the Shooting Stars to maintain possession and repeatedly gain the rebounds of their own shot attempts to finally end the game and take the top overall spot in the CEBL standings.

Post game, Coach Julius acknowledged that there’s still work to do regarding managing emotions in tightly contested games like this.

“We approach the day a certain way, to where, you know, I'd like to think that when things go wrong, they don't lose their cool like that, they don't lose their emotions, right? Or when they do, they could reset and get back quickly, and we did not do that. We practice that, we talk about that, we work on that, but they did not do that tonight, and as a result, yeah, it's clearly something we got to work on. Clearly something we got to talk about.”

The Bandits hit the road for one game on Thursday against the Winnipeg Sea Bears before returning home to host the Brampton Honey Badgers on Saturday, June 20 at 6pm.