The Winnipeg Sea Bears are Canadian Elite Basketball League champions for the first time in franchise history.<\/p>\n
Despite playing without injured star forward Teddy Allen, the Manitoba crew defeated the visiting Brampton Honey Badgers 98-84 on Saturday at Canada Life Centre to claim the 2026 title.<\/p>\n
The CEBL championship was intended to be a three-game series concluding Sunday, but Wednesday’s first game at Brampton’s CAA Centre was suspended early due to condensation on the court, and then cancelled.<\/p>\n
The league then said a three-game final couldn’t be completed within the scheduled window, and after consulting with both clubs, opted to return to a single game used from 2019 to 2025 to determine the champion.<\/p>\n
Finals MVP Xavier Moon led the Sea Bears with 29 points and seven rebounds, while Simon Hildebrandt had 24 points and six rebounds.<\/p>\n
“It’s crazy to be back in this environment again. I mean, obviously, familiar territory for me for winning, but to do it in a city that’s never won a playoff game, I think it means a lot more,” said Moon.<\/p>\n
“This one is a lot more special than the first one. So, like I’ve been saying, man, I’m happy for my teammates, and I’m happy for the city of Winnipeg.”<\/p>\n
Sean East the Second led the Honey Badgers with 27 points and five assists. Trentyn Flowers had 20 points for the visitors, who trailed 46-42 at halftime and 73-60 heading into the final quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m just super happy for everybody that is out there celebrating today and that it came to fruition because the organization did definitely deserve a championship,\u201d said Sea Bears new head coach Mike Raimbault.<\/p>\n
The Sea Bears, who finished second in the Western Conference, defeated the Saskatoon Mamba and Vancouver Bandits in the West playoffs to reach the final.<\/p>\n
The Honey Badgers, who finished second in the Eastern Conference, defeated the Ottawa BlackJacks and Niagara River Lions in the East playoffs to reach the final.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fought hard. We dealt with adversity. Not the outcome we wanted,\u201d East II said. \u201cWe turned the Brampton program around so we can be happy about that for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Winnipeg Sea Bears are Canadian Elite Basketball League champions for the first time in franchise history. Despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194339],"tags":[51759,49,48],"class_list":["post-859915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brampton","tag-brampton","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859915","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=859915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}