The Winnipeg Sea Bears are Canadian Elite Basketball League champions, and a hometown product delivered the winning shot in front of a record crowd.<\/p>\n
Winnipeg’s Simon Hildebrandt hit the championship-winning three-pointer Saturday as the Sea Bears defeated the Brampton Honey Badgers 98-84 at Canada Life Centre.<\/p>\n
A league-record 12,519 fans packed the downtown Winnipeg arena for the championship game, setting an all-time CEBL attendance record.<\/p>\n
Hometown product delivers<\/p>\n
The Sea Bears took a 46-42 lead into halftime before eventually reaching the CEBL’s Target Score with Hildebrandt’s three-pointer.<\/p>\n
The Winnipeg product connected from beyond the arc to give the Sea Bears the 98-84 victory and secure the championship for his hometown team.<\/p>\n
The win gave Winnipeg the CEBL title on its home court in front of the largest crowd ever to attend a league game.<\/p>\n
Xavier Moon led the team with 29 points and was named the championship MVP. Hildebrandt had 24 points.<\/p>\n
Championship decided in Winnipeg<\/p>\n
Saturday’s championship was originally scheduled to be Game 2 of a best-of-three Finals series between Winnipeg and Brampton.<\/p>\n
The series format changed after Wednesday’s opening game in Brampton was cancelled because condensation on the court left the playing surface unsafe for competition.<\/p>\n
With the best-of-three series unable to be completed within the scheduled window, the CEBL decided the championship would instead be determined in a single game at Canada Life Centre.<\/p>\n
That set the stage for Saturday’s winner-take-all matchup, with the Sea Bears ultimately reaching the Target Score on Hildebrandt’s championship-winning three-pointer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Winnipeg Sea Bears are Canadian Elite Basketball League champions, and a hometown product delivered the winning shot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-859632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}