Much has changed for Junior Cadougan in the last year.
Last February, he was deactivated from the roster of the National Basketball League of Canada’s London Lightning after a miserable winter that saw him hobbled by a knee injury, sidelined by arthroscopic knee surgery and limited to just five regular-season games with the Lightning.
Today, he’s the motor pushing the St. John’s Edge, the team’s starting point guard and now a two-time recent winner of the NBLC’s Canadian player of the week award.
Cadougan’s latest honour (he also won the award in early January), comes as a result of a four-game stretch that saw the 28-year-old from Toronto average 21 points and more than seven assists per contest. That included two wins over the Windsor Express at Mile One Centre last weekend.
The Central Division-leading Edge (17-11) and second-place Express (15-14) hook up for a third straight game tonight in Windsor, Ont. It’s the start of a four-game Ontario road trip that will also put the Edge up against Cadougan’s old team — the defending champion Lightning — the Kitchener-Waterloo Titans and the expansion Sudbury Five.
Cadougan has been especially effective in 2019. In 15 games since the start of the new year, he has a total of 289 points, for a better than a 19 ppg average. He’s also dished out 82 assist over that stretch.
His play was such that it probably contributed to the Edge trading star guard Maurice Jones to the Island Storm earlier this month. Jones, by the way, is now a member of the Five, who will be the Edge’s opponents on Monday.
Forward/guard Russell Byrd, whose rights the Edge acquired in the trade for Jones, is expected to join the team in Windsor today.
Byrd, who played for St. John’s last season, averaged 18 points per game in 17 games with the Storm this season before leaving the NBL Canada to play in Qatar. But he’s back after signing with the Edge on Friday, the same day they signed and activated former Express forward Shaquille Keith.
