Winnipeg Sea Bears defy odds, surge into CEBL championship series

The Winnipeg Sea Bears entered the post-season on a hope and a prayer, but an impressive playoff run now leaves the franchise just two wins away from earning its first Canadian Elite Basketball League championship. The Sea Bears were dealt a tough hand on the eve of the playoffs when three starters were suddenly ruled out.

Left to rebuild the club's chemistry, the remaining roster rallied to win back-to-back playoff games to punch their ticket to the finals.

"We were missing a lot of guys, and even a lot of the announcers, I felt people were writing us off," said forward Simon Hildebrandt. "So we kind of went in there like, 'Hey, let's give them our best shot.' Nobody really believed in us but us."

Winnipeg now faces the Brampton Honey Badgers in what will be the first multi-game championship series in league history. The best-of-three opens Wednesday in Brampton at 7 p.m. ET, before shifting to Winnipeg for Game 2 on Saturday (3:30 p.m.) and, if necessary, Game 3 on Sunday (3:30 p.m.).

Sea Bears guard Teddy Allen, who is the front-runner to win the league's player of the year award, was hospitalized after a violent altercation at a downtown nightclub. Meanwhile, defensive specialist Jeremiah Tilmon Jr. and Winnipeg native Emmanuel Akot also left after signing contracts with clubs in Turkey and Mexico, respectively.

Without Allen, who led the CEBL with an average of nearly 28 points per game, the Sea Bears have had to retool their offensive attack. Much of the workload landed on Xavier Moon, a former three-time CEBL player of the year and two-time league champion who signed with Winnipeg this season.

"We're very resilient. When we're connected, we're a very hard team to beat," Moon said. "A lot of guys want to prove what they can do. Everybody's doing that at their own pace. It's not going to be everybody's day, so you've got to figure out what works best for what guys and in what games. I feel like we're doing the best we can with what we have."

Winnipeg opened the post-season with a 99-88 home victory over the Saskatoon Mamba, who had won six of their previous seven games heading into the Western Conference semifinal.

The No. 2-seeded Sea Bears followed that up by stunning the top-ranked Vancouver Bandits, 107-96, in the West final. Vancouver had clinched first place in the conference by beating Winnipeg on the final weekend of the regular season and entered the game as a heavy favourite.

"They did a really good job of adjusting to different things that we asked them to do during the course of the game, and they played with massive confidence in one another," first-year head coach Mike Raimbault said. "The belief was there, and we went out as a group, and right from the start, you knew who the aggressor was."

Brampton finished second in the Eastern Conference with an 11-13 record.

The Honey Badgers defeated the Ottawa BlackJacks in the East semifinal, before edging the Niagara River Lions in the conference final.