Rush Nation was all smiles Saturday as the province’s National Lacrosse League team went into Buffalo for the first game of the league best-of-three final, and came away with 11-9 win.
The game was razor close throughout. The teams went to the dressing room at the half deadlocked 6-6, and were knotted 8-8 after three periods.
In the fourth the Bandits struck first, Ryan Benesch with an unassisted marker 4:18 in.
Robert Church got that one back at 5:04.
It was then Ben McIntosh, who I had the pleasure to interview earlier in the week, scored what would prove the game-winner at 10:44.
Zack Greer added an insurance-goal at 11:34 to seal the 11-9 win.
The game-winner was McIntosh’s second of the contest and third point, not surprising for a former NLL Rookie of the Year.
The Rush have been strong in the final quarter most games this season, and McIntosh said that is almost be design.
“It’s just about grounding a team down,” he said.
But against the Bandits there is also a game plan in place.
“Buffalo is very good on transition. They score a ton of goals pushing the ball hard,” said McIntosh, who added they went into the series wanting to slow that transition.
Interestingly, McIntosh said the key to doing that was not having the defence dominate, at least not initially,
“The offence has to move. We have to get off the floor quickly,” he said, adding if they are off the floor the defence can get out the door and in position when the Bandits are pushing the ball down the arena.
A big key was holding Dhane Smith from dominating the game on offence. He leads NLL playoff scoring with 21 points in three games, including 11 goals. He also led the league in the regular season with 137 points in 18 games including 72 goals.
McIntosh said Smith is the likely MVP, and while he can never be completely shut down in a game, he must be controlled, and that starts by staying out of the penalty box as Buffalo has a great powerplay.
“Five-on-five I like our chances,” McIntosh said ahead of game one.
The two teams will meet in Saskatoon this Saturday in a game that is all but assured to be played in front of 15,000-plus Rush fans. The atmosphere will be something special, and I am looking forward to being in the crowd thumping my chest with every Rush goal, and hopefully celebrating a championship, the second straight for the franchise.
McIntosh said the fans have been a more than pleasant surprise in Saskatchewan.
“It’s definitely more than we expected,” he said.
“There are sort of two hotbeds (for lacrosse), B.C. and Ont, and Alberta is sort of catching up,” he continued, adding Saskatchewan was not exactly on the sport’s radar but fans have shown they were eager to embrace the Rush.
The key will be “to keep that energy under control,” said McIntosh who said with a packed arena “everybody gets so pumped up.”
Raptors bow out
In the world of the Toronto Raptors, and for that matter the National Basketball Association East Conference, all is as it was expected to be.
All right, perhaps our Raptors were not expected to win a game in the Conference final against Cleveland, at least if you read American media sources, but in a Conference final there should rarely be a sweep. No one team should be that superior to the rest of the field.
The Cavs had coasted to the final, as it had been expected from preseason predictions, and throughout the season.
That was why second spot in the Conference was so critical for TO, it kept them out of the clutches of the Cavs for as long as possible.
The Raptors struggled in the opening rounds, but showed the grit and heart which has fostered the ‘We the North’ phenomenon across Canada. It wasn’t always pretty on the way to the Conference final, but in the end the Raptors arrived at the spot most felt they had to after the disheartening exit from the playoffs in 2015.
Once up against the Cavs even the most ardent fan had to doubt the likelihood of a Raptor miracle, myself included. I held out the hope going into the series that we would steal a win in TO, and not look too bad in the exit to LeBron James and company.
A Raptor win looked doubtful as the series got under way. The Cavs won by 31 in game one, and 19 in game two. The signs of a sweep seemed everywhere.
But our Raptors are gritty at home and found a win by 15 in game three, then six in game four, a game where they held a lead, saw the Cavs claw back, but the Raptors would not break.
At this point some dared dream of a miracle. I was more realistic. To win the series the Raptors had to win game five in Cleveland and then at home in six, because I doubted anyone could beat the Cavs on their home courts in a game seven. That essentially meant winning four straight over the Cavs, and that seemed like a massive stretch of probability to me.
And in game five the Cavs just rolled, winning by 38, which is a thorough trouncing by any measure, and more so in a Conference final.
Raptor fans were hoping for one more bounce back in game six, and Kyle Lowry tried to make it happen with 35 points, and DeMar DeRozan had 20.
But the Cavs won by 26, including outscoring the Raptors by 14 in the final quarter.
In the end the Cavs were picked as the best in the east and they are, but the Raptors are on the right track. They had the best season by the franchise ever, and shouldn’t regress next year. DeRozan is likely to get a big contract, some count he’s worth it, but he is part of a ‘family’ with the Raps and you do not want to discount that or rock the boat in terms of core team make-up. DeMar and Kyle like each other, and that matters.
Also who could you backfill DeRozan with if you let him get away?
The Raptors have draft picks, although not as high as we might have hoped for after the lottery, and some younger depth they will need to turn into one more ‘key’ player to compete with teams like the Cavs, but the pieces to move on the board are there.
Of course the Cavs are likely to fall to either Oklahoma City or Golden State in the league finals, but again that was predicted months ago with Cleveland thought to be the league’s fourth best team.
