Ahmad, River Lions finish strong to take down BlackJacks

Limited early in the game thanks to foul trouble, Khalil Ahmad did what he seemingly always does and turned it on when it mattered most.

The 2022 CEBL MVP scored 11 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter and Target Time to lead his team to a 90-89 victory over the Ottawa BlackJacks. Ahmed Hill and Nathan Cayo added 13 points each, with the former adding nine rebounds and the latter grabbing five boards and dishing out five assists.

“I thought that he was bound to get going,” Niagara head coach Victor Raso said of his star player. “But we just couldn’t get him any minutes because he was getting into foul trouble and then he picked up his third and fourth with six and a half minutes to go in the third quarter. So, we put him in with eight minutes left and were trying to take him out on defensive possessions, but he just stuck with it. Khalil is a very good player in this league, and it’s a frustration experience for him and to play against him because he is so physical. I was proud that he kept his composure down the stretch and ultimately made the free throw for the win.”

“Sometimes I do want to use him as a decoy. I have those thoughts of, “Okay, let’s go somewhere else’. But then I’m like, ‘You’re an idiot. Khalil scores all the time’. He didn’t score all the points in target time, but he did have the ball in his hands and he was making good decisions. Can I use him somewhere else or do I just get him the ball? He tends to get things done.”

The River Lions came out hot and finished the first quarter with a 30-14 lead, thanks largely to their 14 rebounds and holding the BlackJacks to 5-of-16 from the field. Ottawa answered strongly in the second quarter, going on a 24-16 run to cut the lead to as little as six before Niagara went into halftime up 51-44.

“We just changed a few things on defense,” BlackJacks head coach Dave DeAveiro said post game. “Sometimes as coaches you complicate things when you don’t need to. Just kept in simple in the second half and guys really stepped up and played a lot harder. We made the change, and I thought our guys did a tremendous job.”

Despite the disappointing outcome, of number of players on the BlackJacks had standout performances. Isaih Moore had 23 points – including 15 in the second quarter – and added 16 rebounds, finishing one shy of the team regular season record in his first game since suffering an injury on May 21. Rudi Williams had 14 points off the bench and Tyrell Tate went 4-for-8 from beyond the arc to finish with 12. In his first start of the season, Justin Jackson finished just shy of a double-double, with seven points and nine rebounds.

Zane Waterman made his BlackJacks debut Sunday afternoon after spending the previous three seasons with the Honey Badgers franchise, winning a title in 2022. He impressed the coaching staff with 16 points and eight rebounds off the bench.

“Zane adds a toughness, you saw of that today on the rebounding, and some shooting that we needed,” DeAveiro said of his new additions. “The hard part is figuring out the rule where you can only play three imports at a time and juggling that and making that work. You saw; three games on the road without (Moore). Maybe if he plays in those games it’s a different outcome. He’s just an impact guy like that. Having him back – and the addition of Waterman – will only make us better.”

“It was nice to play with these guys,” Waterman said of his new squad. “I’ve played against them for three years and I really like their game, so it was nice to play with them for once. Came up short, but we played a really good game. It could have gone either way. It’s a credit to these guys. They helped me fit in well. Some nights it’s going to be your night. Tonight it was for me personally, but I wish we could have got the win.”

The BlackJacks continued to crawl back into the game, going on a 16-4 run at the end of the third to close the gap to one. A Waterman basket at the 8:10 mark of the fourth quarter saw the team take their first lead of the game, a lead they would extend to as much as eight before being up 81-76 going into Target Time. But unfortunately for the home team, things played out much like they did when the squads faced each other in Ottawa’s season opener.

“Something we’ve been preaching out here is that we have to get better at Target Time,” Moore said. “We got to finish games. He have to finish basketball games. We have to get better at finishing games.”

“It’s a rivalry,” he added. “Last three games against Niagara have all been decided by three points. The lob from Khalil Ahmed last year, lost by two at the start of the year, and now lost by one. It doesn’t get closer than one point in this game. There’s no ties. Now we have to win. Three points, two points, one point; we have to win. It’s always going to be a good game against Niagara, it’s always going to be hard fought game to the end like that. But we have to get a win. One point. That hurts. I’m going to think about that all day.”

The win improved Niagara to 2-0 in Ottawa this season. The BlackJacks fell to 1-2 at home on the year