Wyatt Anderson
M seven years ago to take over as the team’s head basketball coach, he vowed to make the Bisons great again.
To his undying credit, he’s on the verge of delivering.
“When I first came here, we changed our style immediately,” said Schepp, smiling. “We almost instantly became
one of the top scoring teams in the country.
“But while we became a lot more exciting, it didn’t necessarily mean we were instantly successful. That took time
and it took a lot of work.”
It would appear that all
that work has paid dividends. Schepp’s Bisons were
ranked ninth in the country
at the end of last season. It
was the first time the Bisons
had finished a season
ranked in the Top 10 in
Canada in more than two
decades.
This year, Schepp’s team
of local high school stars
will start the schedule
ranked among the Top 3 in
Canada West and there is no
reason to believe that they
won’t compete for a spot in
the national tournament.
“It’s certainly better to be
winning,” Schepp said with
a smile. “This is a good
team and it was built in
Winnipeg. We have three
20 / sportslife
good players from outside Winnipeg – Jonathan
Alexander and Osahon Eghosa are from Toronto
and Ilarion Bonhomme is from Washington,
D.C. – but our starters will all be from
Winnipeg.”
One of the mos t impressive players to watch,
anywhere in Canada, is Bisons 6-foot-2 pointguard and co-captain Justus Alleyn. Last year
Alleyn, 21, who played his high school ball at St.
Paul’s, averaged 15.6 points and 2.9 assists per
game. He also averaged 3.7 rebounds and 1.1
steals in 20 conference regular season games.
Alleyn will enter his fourth season with the
Bisons. Last year he was second on the team in
scoring (16th in conference) and third on the
team in assists per game, fourth in rebounds
per game, second in blocks per game, third in
minutes played per game (33.0) and second
(11th in Canada West) in three-point shooting at
40.0 per cent.
“He’s a great player,” Schepp said without any
sense of hyperbole. “He’d be the CIS version of
Russell Westbrook. He plays angry. He looks like
he’s actually angry at his opponent. He had a
great off-season and he’ll be one of our leaders
again this year.”
Alleyn is complemented in the back court by co-captain
A.J. Basi, the Bisons leading scorer last season and one of
the best shooters in the nation. Basi came out of Sturgeon
Heights Collegiate and is expected to be one of the top
offensive players in the country in this, his senior year.
Basi, 23, starts his fifth and final season at Manitoba and
was also a team captain last season. In his fourth season,
Keith Omoerah