Ahmad lifts River Lions to CEBL Finals in hard-fought win over scrappy Alliance

In the Niagara River Lions’ locker room after the East final, there was singing and dancing.

First though, there may also have been a few sighs of relief.

The top-seeded River Lions escaped with a 78-75 win over the host Montreal Alliance on Friday at Verdun Auditorium thanks, once again, to Khalil Ahmad, the two-time Clutch Player of the Year who drained two straight three-pointers to seal the victory.

The River Lions, who topped the East at 14-6 in the regular season, will meet the West’s top seed, the 14-6 Vancouver Bandits, in Sunday’s CEBL Finals back at Verdun.

It’s a game Niagara enters with confidence knowing Ahmad, who also scored a franchise playoff record 31 points, is on their side.

“He’s playing incredible basketball right now. You could tell from the start of the game, he is incredibly engaged and when the game is on the line, man, there’s not a secret to it. He’s an incredible athlete who is very, very well-trained, he takes his craft seriously and he has the ultimate confidence in himself,” River Lions head coach Raso said.

“And he just does it. He makes us look good.”

The Alliance led 69-67 when the clock turned off for Target Score Time, and the teams traded baskets as an already-intense contest ratcheted up a notch.

Montreal (6-14), which automatically qualified for this game as hosts, punched back every time Niagara threw anything at them and seemed to control the pace for most of the game.

Even after Ahmad made his first three-pointer in Target Score Time to put his team within a bucket of victory, Alliance guard Alain Louis answered back with a pair of free throws.

But Ahmad came right back down the floor with a response of his own, nailing a deep, contested jumper to send Niagara to the championship game.

“It’s taking me back to playing 21 with your friends, next point wins kind of thing,” Ahmad said. “But shout out to my teammates, because they carried me throughout the whole game. [I was] shooting terribly, missing free throws, et cetera, but [they were] giving me confidence, making big plays.”

In addition to his scoring output, Ahmad collected 10 rebounds to complete a double-double.

But he made just nine of 20 field-goal attempts (4-for-14 from beyond the arc) and missed five of his 14 tries from the free-throw line.

At least some credit goes to the crowd of over 3,000 at Verdun Auditorium, which roared every time the Alliance made a basket — and especially when those points gave their team the lead.

As a team, Niagara shot just 18 per cent from beyond the arc and 55 per cent from the line.

“We won a game on our worst shooting day and we talked all year about that: how good are you on your worst day? And today was our worst day. And all credit goes to Montreal, those guys are athletic across the board,” Raso said.

“[The River Lions players are] just a gritty, gritty, gritty group who always believes they have a chance. And a lot of that is because they always know that Khalil’s on our team.”

Niagara, which was one of the league’s original six teams, has reached the playoffs in every year but only made the Finals once, when it lost to Edmonton in 2021.

Now Victor Raso, the all-time coaching wins leader who took the River Lions’ helm in 2020, will get another shot to claim his title ring.

Montreal’s season, meanwhile, ends despite a valiant effort.

The Alliance went just 6-14 during the regular season but knew the entire time they’d be playing in this game and often spoke of the difficulty of maintaining focus with an automatic spot at Championship Weekend.

Indeed, things played out that way as the playoff version of the Alliance played a much crisper form of basketball than its regular-season counterpart.

Upon entering the post-game media room, head coach Derrick Alston Sr., spent a few moments going over the box score. His conclusion?

“We played pretty fu-, we played pretty well,” he said with a laugh.

Ahmed Hill paced a spread Alliance attack with 14 points, while Jordan Bowden added a 10-point, 11-rebound double-double.

Alston Sr., said the team, which endured struggles and close losses throughout the campaign, peaked at the right time.

“We gave them a run for their money. It sucks that it didn’t turn out our way especially at home, crowd was great. You just feel sad,” he said.

Indiana Pacers guard Bennedict Mathurin, a Montreal native, was in the house for the game.

Niagara’s Jahvon Blair, the team’s second-leading scorer, missed the game as he had to report back to his professional team in France. He won’t be available for the Finals either.

The game began slowly as the teams combined for the lowest scoring quarter in playoff history, with the River Lions ahead 16-11 after 10 minutes.

The Alliance fought back in the second quarter as the River Lions’ offence continued to struggle. But Ahmad finally seemed to take the lid off the rim in the final minute of the half, knocking down a pair of threes to send his team to the locker rooms with a 38-36 edge. With his pair of triples, Ahmad surpassed 100 career three-pointers.

Yet Montreal withstood the brief flurry and continued to fight its way through the game. A buzzer-beating trey from Bowden put the Alliance up 59-54 entering the fourth quarter.

Montreal led by as many as seven points in the fourth quarter before a 5-0 River Lions run sent the game to Target Score Time.

Or, as it’s quickly becoming known, Ahmad Time.