Shooting Stars host Alliance in high-powered play-in game

After the CEBL’s longest regular season ever, the playoffs have arrived — and the urgency is about to pick up.

The post-season begins with the Eastern Conference Play-In game as the Scarborough Shooting Stars host the Montreal Alliance at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre on Thursday at 7 p.m. ET.

The winner of the one-game knockout will then travel to Gatineau, Que., to face the Ottawa BlackJacks in Saturday’s conference semifinal, where a trip to Winnipeg for Championship Weekend will be on the line.

Both the Shooting Stars (11-13, third in East) and Alliance (9-15, fourth) experienced roller-coaster regular seasons — and both on paper appear intriguingly even.

Scarborough opened the year with three straight wins, only to lose its next three to fall right back to .500.

The Shooting Stars then found their level through the middle of the season and lightly threatened the Niagara River Lions atop the conference before another three-game skid ended those hopes. Now, they enter the playoffs having dropped two straight to fall into the play-in game.

Montreal’s ride was even more extreme — the Alliance opened the season in dominant fashion, winning four straight games by at least 20 points each.

Then, like the Shooting Stars, they crashed back to earth with a four-game skid that brought them back to .500.

Another four-game skid in July put Montreal on its back heel, and it’s essentially been locked into fourth place ever since.

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the Shooting Stars and Alliance split their four games against each other, including a Montreal win in Sunday’s regular-season finale.

However, going into what promises to be a raucous Scarborough arena could prove challenging for the Alliance, who struggled on the road with a 4-8 record.

Still, these teams enter with nearly identical statistical records: they were average both offensively (Scarborough fifth, Montreal sixth) and defensively (Montreal fourth, Scarborough fifth).

While both teams were also middle-of-the-pack in field-goal percentage, they were each top-four in three-point percentage, but strangely both bottom-three in free-throw percentage.

The Shooting Stars’ glaring advantage comes on the defensive side of the ball, where they were third in steals per game while leading the league in blocks per game at 6.1 (no other team even average five).

Player spotlight

Ultimately, however, this contest will come down to the stars on either side.

The Shooting Stars boast two of the league’s five leading scorers in Donovan Williams (22.7 points per game) and Terquavion Smith (22.6).

Williams and Smith are equally capable of carrying the load for Scarborough, and if both are firing on all cylinders the Shooting Stars offence can become deadly.

Williams, the 23-year-old Houston native, is in his second season with Scarborough. A steady scorer, Williams also hauled down 4.5 rebounds per contest on the season.

Smith, the 22-year-old from Greenville, N.C., made 3.3 triples per game to sit fourth leaguewide. However, he’s failed to reach 20 points in three of his last four games while attempting just seven free throws in that span.

On the other side, the Alliance have a pair of shifty guards who could alter a game in a hurry.

If he hadn’t sat the final game of the season, Tavian Dunn-Martin might have set the league record for three-pointers in a season as he finished with 68. The all-time mark sits at 70.

The 5-foot-8 Dunn-Martin emerged as Montreal’s MVP, leading the team in points (19.6), assists (six) and steals (0.9) per game in addition to a 41.5 per cent mark from beyond the arc.

And then there’s Montreal’s secret weapon: Tavis ‘Pistol’ Smith.

The 6-foot-3 guard is a firecracker offensively. Though he played just seven games, Smith sparked the Alliance with 15.3 points per contest including 2.7 three-pointers, proving to be a more-than-capable sidekick for Dunn-Martin.

If those two get hot, the Shooting Stars could be in trouble.

And if Williams and Smith find their stroke too, then the first playoff game of the season could even prove to be its most entertaining.