Alliance draws noisy, near-sellout crowd in its Verdun debut

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Montreal’s newest professional sports team, the Montreal Alliance, made a noisy home debut Sunday and they played off the energy of a near-sellout crowd at the Verdun Auditorium to defeat the Scarborough Shooting Stars.

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“The crowd was amazing,” said Dominic Green, whose three-point shooting ignited a fourth-quarter comeback for the Alliance. “They had a lot of energy and there’s nothing better for a basketball player than to have that energy to feed off because that allows you to go harder.”

The Alliance trailed 45-37 at the half and went into the final quarter down 56-55. That’s when Green went to town. He backed up a strong defensive effort by draining four three-point shots and the home team sprinted to a 67-56 lead.

Green made 14 of 20 shots from the floor, including 5-of-9 from three-point range and finished with 36 points, two shy of the Canadian Elite Basketball League record.

Green, a University of Washington product, plays professionally in Germany and, at 25, he’s hoping to attract the attention of the NBA.

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“I’m trying to get better every day, but mostly I want to help the team win because, when you win, that’s when you get recognition,” Green said.

“We did a great job getting stops,” he said. “The first half, we were struggling with our defensive rebounding and boxing out. We did a better job in the second half and the crowd brought us up.”

“We just locked in,” said co-captain Kemy Ossé, who contributed 12 points. “In the first half we were giving them a lot of baskets off the break but, in the second half, we started to pressure at half-court and forced them to set up in the offensive zone. We didn’t want to give them any easy baskets.”

Fans were introduced to the Elam Ending, which was first introduced at the 2020 NBA All-Star Game. With four minutes to play, the game clock is turned off and a target score — nine points more than the leading team — is established and the teams continue until one reaches that score. The Alliance led 70-61 when the clock was turned and that was a big advantage because they needed only nine points and the visitors needed 18. Scarborough cut the points to seven before Ossé ended the game with a three-pointer.

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Kyle Alexander led Scarborough with 22 points and Jalen Harris added 18.

Ossé said he was happy to see two familiar faces in the crowd — NBA players Luguentz Dort and Chris Boucher.

“Boucher is my generation, but I know them both because they help out with my brother’s camp in Park-Ex,” said the 29-year-old Ossé.

There was another celebrity on the floor. Jeremiah Cole, who failed to score — or do anything else for that matter — in his 4:34 of playing time, and is better known as rapper J Cole.

The win evened the Alliance record at 1-1. The Alliance will be back in action on Tuesday when the Ottawa Blackjacks visit the Verdun Auditorium.

The typoff for the 4 pm game was delayed until 4:27 to accommodate late-arriving fans who discovered parking is at premium in Verdun.

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