So, here’s the quandary Jeff Dunlap is wrestling with as he prepares his St. John’s Edge for their first playoff series in franchise history starting tonight.
The Edge’s opponent, the Windsor Express, will likely start two big forwards, 6-9 Logan Stutz, a former league MVP, and 6-11 Damontre Harris, which could be a challenge defending for 6-5 Charles Hinkle and 6-9 Ryan Reid of the Edge.
On the other hand, Dunlap likes the idea of the agile Hinkle doing his thing at the other end of the court, where he scored an average of 20.9 points per game, fourth in the league, and finished fourth overall in three-point shooting.
Of course, you can also toss Carl English and his 23.9 points per game, second overall in the 10-team circuit, into the mix,
“It’s kind of a pick your poison type thing,” said Dunlap, the Edge’s coach. “How do you want to start? You want to be more concerned with how you match up defensively, or do we want to be a matchup problem for them?
“And I think we are (a matchup problem). I think that’s proven to be more effective for us in the five of the eight games we’ve won (against the Express).”
The Edge and Express open their opening-round, best-of-five Central Division semifinal 7 o’clock tonight at Mile One Centre. Game 2 goes 2 p.m. Sunday, before the series shifts to Windsor, Ont. for games 3 and 4 next Wednesday and Friday.
If a fifth game is necessary, it will be played 2 p.m. Sunday, April 15 at Mile One.
The Edge (25-15) finished second to the 27-13 London Lightning in the Central Division this season. The Express were third with an even 20-20 mark.
St. John’s had the, pardon the pun, edge on Windsor during the regular season, winning five of their eight regular season games.
At Mile One, however, St. John’s went 2-2 with Windsor.
Windsor does have size up front, but Dunlap acknowledges it’s a different Edge team today.
St. John’s got bigger at the league’s Feb. 19 trade/transaction deadline, trading for 6-10 Anthony Stover, who had been with the Niagara River Lions, and signing 6-7 Xavier Ford, who had been playing in Europe.
"It’s kind of a pick your poison type thing. How do you want to start? You want to be more concerned with how you match up defensively, or do we want to be a matchup problem for them?”
St. John’s Edge head coach Jeff Dunlap
While the NBL Canada is very much a guard-oriented league, you still need size up front.
Since mid-December, Dunlap traded for 6-7 forward Russell Byrd, signed 6-8 veteran Ransford Brempong and the 6-9 Reid, the former NBA player with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“We’re certainly a little different team here in the last few weeks … we’ve gotten bigger, and Stover has become an important piece to the equation,” Dunlap said. “He’s going to be a factor.”
Of course, the team’s roster has changed from year to year, but the Express have enjoyed playoff success these past number of years, reaching the conference final the past two seasons, only to lose to London each time, and winning the 2014 and 2015 league championships.
The expansion Edge, of course, have no playoff experience as a group in the NBL Canada.
“Taking into account we’ve only been together for just a few months, if we’re going to advance in the playoffs, we have to be the better executing team,” Dunlap said.
“We have a group of guys who have never been in this position before. So we’re really going to have to hunker down and be committed to what we do and how we do it, and be drop dead, cold-blooded executioners because that’s what will counter the experience the other teams have.”
One of Windsor’s late-season additions was veteran Omar Strong, a former NBL Canada all-star who had been playing overseas before this season. In the 11 games he played with Windsor, Strong average 13. 7 points a game.
“He’s a game-breaker kind of guy,” Dunlap said. “He can go off and hit three or four or five threes in a span of a couple of minutes. He kind of reminds me of Vinnie Johnson when he was in the NBA. He’d just launch threes for the (Detroit) Pistons. Strong’s that kind of guy.
“So how we play him, and not let him get going, is key to our success in this series as well.”
