Raptors 905 93, Canton Charge 116 | Box Score
Most of the time, familiarity is a good feeling. It’s warm. It’s comfortable. It’s expected.
That’s not as much the case when that familiarity is bred from back-to-back losses in identical fashion. Raptors 905 played essentially the exact same game Sunday as they did Saturday, losing to the Canton Charge 116-93. The score (106-88) may have been different a day earlier and the location flipped to Mississauga, but little else changed.
But hey, again, like Saturday, at least they didn’t get buried in a 19-0 hole to start the game like they did against Canton on Boxing Day. Small victories. There may have actually been more small victories in Sunday’s loss, even if it was objectively worse and at home.
Clearly head coach Jesse Mermuys wasn’t of that mind, as he opened the fourth quarter with his second career technical foul, this one far more deserved than his mysterious first technical a few weeks back.
“I just thought that was really bad,” Mermuys said after the game. “That’s on me. I can’t afford to get a technical when you’re already down and getting your butt kicked.
The frustration is understandable with the 905 defense turning in a second consecutive shaky defensive effort, letting the Charge feast off of turnovers, on the offensive glass, and from long-range.
“I thought last night they kicked our ass but we kept playing hard,” Mermuys said. “And tonight we didn’t have that. We couldn’t sustain that effort. There were some really bad lapses. I hadn’t seen that in a really long time.”
A night after going ice cold from outside, Canton got just as healthy a diet of open outside looks, this time hitting at a slightly stronger clip for a 9-of-26 night. The 14 offensive rebounds, which led to 15 second-chance points in total, often led to kickouts against a scrambled defense. Juvonte Reddic, in particular, was a force on the glass, grabbing six rebounds at the offensive end and 19 in total to go along with 13 points.
And the 19 points off of turnovers, well, read any recap from this season. Points off of turnovers isn’t a perfectly descriptive statistic, but Canton had 10 steals on the night, and they’re really comfortable pushing the pace and scoring in transition. Again, that put a great deal of pressure on a normally sound 905 defense that just didn’t have much chance to get set.
Still, Canton’s a really strong team at 21-13, even without point guard Quinn Cook, who missed Sunday’s game with a concussion after posting a triple-double Saturday. Michael Stockton seamlessly picked up the slack, dishing 12 assists to go with 18 points and six rebounds, nearly matching Cook’s triple-double in his stead.
Nearly to a man, the Charge can shoot, which really stretches out the defense and puts a great deal of pressure on switches out of the pick-and-roll. Nick Minnerath, in particular, can be a problem as the screener and popped and dove his way to 18 points, and Antoine Agudio was an unexpected terror spotting up with 19 first-half points on 5-of-8 shooting.
There may not be a lot to take from a drubbing that harkened back to the early-season 905 outfit that struggled against top teams. Discouraging is the lack of energy without top player and unrelenting source of effort Ronald Roberts, but at least a pair of prospects were cause for some optimism.
Bruno Caboclo was sent down and turned in a decidedly “Bru-Yes” performance, attacking closeouts aggressively to score at the rim and create for others off the move. With his 3-point shot falling more often of late – despite a 3-of-10 night – defenders are starting to get tighter to him on the outside, and Caboclo’s beginning to accept that additional challenge and keeping things flowing with quick, decisive attacks off the catch.
He finished with 21 points, six rebounds, and four assists in 33 minutes, and while his defense certainly wasn’t at its sharpest, he also did this, so all’s forgiven.
Joining him in the definitive plus ledger was Sim Bhullar, who set a season-high with 21 points on 8-of-12 shooting and 10 rebounds. I’ll have more coming on Bhullar’s progress this week, and it can still be challenging to watch him try to run the floor, but when he’s able to get where he needs to be, he’s growing more and more effective.
That’s becoming more and more often, and Saturday marked Bhullar’s fourth double-double in his last five games. That’s an arbitrary benchmark, sure, but simply being on the floor long enough to tally those stats is a far cry from where he started the season. He’s catching the ball and keeping it high on dump-offs, he’s getting out higher in the pick-and-roll defensively, and he’s inching into good enough shape to let his size cause problems.
Like with Caboclo, it wasn’t his best defensive effort by any means, but overall, he’s trending upward.
That’s not the case for the team as a whole, as they’ve now turned in back-to-back poor performances after a long stretch of markedly improved play. Almost nobody played well at either end of the floor save for a late spark from Ashton Smith in a third point guard role, and even Greg Smith’s 12-and-12 game came on 4-of-15 shooting.
It’s a disappointing two-game turn, and there has to be some concern that old habits are creeping back in. If that’s the case, maybe back-to-back blowout losses can help the team recalibrate.
“We’re definitely further along than we were, there’s, no question about it,” Mermuys said. “I hadn’t seen that in so long. That’s why I was disappointed tonight, that we saw that creep back into our game and into our personality.
“Maybe we thought we were further along than we really were. This is a nice little wake-up tool.”
The 905 will look to rebound Tuesday when they begin a three-game road trip in Iowa.
