Sea Bears fall to Shooting Stars

This was one Shooting Star the Winnipeg Sea Bears would never wish upon.

Riding high off consecutive victories to open the 2026 Canadian Elite Basketball League campaign, the Sea Bears were stopped in their tracks by a one-man wrecking crew on Tuesday, as Scarborough Shooting Stars’ guard Myles Powell delivered a sensational 41-point effort to hand Winnipeg its first loss of the year in a 103-101 decision at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre.

Powell’s game-winning bucket was one of nine three-pointers by the former Philadelphia 76er, and it may have been his easiest one to make.

With the Sea Bears leading 101-100 (the Target Score was 102), Powell missed on his first attempt from deep, but the ball found its way back to him following an offensive rebound, and he made no mistake on the open second look.

“Very difficult. Obviously, we knew he wanted to take the last shot, and we missed the defensive rebound to go the other way. Definitely a situation where I feel like we lost a bit of focus in that moment — maybe tired,” said Sea Bears guard Armani Chaney, who had 14 points and six assists off the bench.

Powell had it going from the second quarter onward. He drilled a buzzer-beater from just over half-court before halftime, converted on a tough corner three to cut the Sea Bears’ lead to 93-88 heading into Target Score Time and hit another pair of contested threes in Target Time to give the hosts the lead before Winnipeg momentarily took it back.

It didn’t matter how well the Sea Bears guarded him, Powell still knocked down the difficult shot. He made 15 of his 26 shot attempts (57 per cent) in the contest.

“He did a great job of punishing us when we made mistakes,” said head coach Mike Raimbault, whose squad fell to 2-1 on the season. “He made tough shots. He’s crafty with the ball, and he finds a way to get into open space.”

This one will sting for the Sea Bears, who led by as much as 10 in the fourth quarter and looked like they might run away with the win during several stretches.

That the game ended on a second-chance opportunity was perhaps fitting for a Scarborough team that feasted on offensive rebounds, recording 27 second-chance points to Winnipeg’s 16.

“I feel like most of the night, they had more energy than us. I feel like we were kind of small, too. Just getting bodies on their bigs, their taller guys, was key,” said guard Trey McGowens, who delivered 12 points and six assists. “We gave up a lot of rebounds.”

The Sea Bears sent out a smaller lineup for much of the contest, as Jeremiah Tilmon Jr. got into foul trouble early on and played just six minutes. Tilmon had been an anchor on the defensive end and a Hoover when it came to rebounds in the first two games, and although fellow big man Kyler Filewich came down with six boards in relief, the difference for the Sea Bears without their starting centre was clear.

“I thought it was unfortunate that Tilmon got into foul trouble really early,” said Raimbault. “The other day, he played I don’t know how many minutes — to get six out of him today, it puts us in a bit of a situation where we’re going to play a little bit differently. I think the group responded with a decent effort. We were right there.”

Teddy Allen displayed the most offensively aggressive version of himself so far this season, taking several shots from long range and attempting several difficult shots, some of which were perhaps ill-advised.

The star guard got enough of them to fall to warrant him continuing to take some big swings, though. He went shot-for-shot with Powell for much of the game, finishing with 33 points, eight rebounds and four assists in 37:46 of playing time.

Fellow starters Emmanuel Akot and Davion Warren chipped in with 12 and 10 points, respectively.

Unlike their game on Saturday, when they had a full week in between contests, the Sea Bears had just a couple of days of rest since the last game.

What also didn’t help was an early start time that clearly impacted the visitors, who tipped off at 10 a.m. CT as a part of the CEBL’s local initiative with school-aged children. The Sea Bears took a quarter to wake up, making just one field goal from two-point range and were down 22-16 after the opening frame.

Despite a sloppy start, the visitors weathered the storm by making several three-pointers, and those shots from deep range continued to fall once the club tightened up its play.

The Sea Bears finished 13-of-29 (44 per cent) collectively from three-point range. For comparison, they had made 13 shots from beyond the arc through the first two contests. It’s at least one positive takeaway for a team that was dead-last with a 29.7 efficiency from long range last season and was firing at a 25 per cent clip through the first two games of this season.

“Obviously, we still fought back and took a 10-point lead. We gave it away. We just need to learn how to hold on to the lead and figure out what we need to do when we have the advantage,” said Chaney.

“It’s great for us,” an optimistic Raimbault said of being in tight games early in the season. “I think there’s lots of takeaways of things that we need to clean up and do better, and when you’re right there and you don’t get it done, then you have a bit of a chance to go back and look at a lot of possessions from earlier in the game and try to clean things up.”

All 11 players on the travelling roster got into the action, including Hamilton, Ont.-born guard Nathan Bilamu, who joined the team on the road after his season with Esgueira Basket in Portugal’s Liga Portuguesa de Basquetebol concluded.

Bilamu, who began his second summer with the Sea Bears, recorded two points, two rebounds and one assist in 7:04 of playing time.

The Sea Bears will lick their wounds and gear up to host the back-to-back CEBL champion Niagara River Lions at Canada Life Centre on Friday (7 p.m.).

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