The Ottawa Blackjacks welcomed in the defending Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL) champions the Niagara River Lions at TD Place Arena to kick off the 2025 season. In their first game of the season Sunday, the Blackjacks faithful showed up and sett a new home opener attendance record at 3,400. Team president Mark Wacyk says staff have looking forward to this game since their season ended last year. “It’s a culmination of a lot of effort by a great team that we have in the front office and our basketball operations staff,” Wacyk said. “It’s a culmination and we’re really enthused by the crowd we’re going to have today.” Ottawa’s season ended in heartbreak last year, losing by one point to the eventual CEBL champion River Lions in the semi-finals. Expectations this season are to make it even further. “We got most of our team back, we have good consistency with our roster. The expectation here is to get ourselves to Winnipeg for the final four, certainly compete for the title in the East and get us to that Final Four. And from there, we’d like to bring home a CBL championship for our community,” Wacyk said. General manager James Derouin says the team needs to start strong and build momentum off their ending last season. “Every team starts the year to win a championship, right? But that’s what everybody’s going to answer. We want to build off at the end of last year, I think that’s where we start and finish with this team,” Derouin said. “We finished seven and three in our last ten games last year. Had a huge upset playoff win. We’re eventually going to bring back the entire core of that group and I think once the group is here, I think we got a great chance this year.” It was a tight finish in Sunday’s contest, with the Blackjacks losing the opener by a score of 87-85. The River Lions came back from down 17 points in the contest. River Lions Ahmed Hill hit both free throws to hit the target score of 87. The Blackjacks will play they next game at home against the Brantford Honey Badgers on May. 21 at 7:30 p.m.
