Coming into this season, Buckets Galore hadn’t lost a game since March 4, a 79-74 defeat to the Warriors in the quarterfinals of the winter season. Since that loss, they would go on to win 21 straight games, including both the spring and summer titles in the MetroWest Draft League.

The success of the last two seasons did not carry over into the start of the fall season, as Buckets Galore fell to Black Widows 81-74.

It was fitting revenge for Black Widows’ captain, Roland Millien, who lost to Ajao and Buckets Galore 72-71 in the summer championship. The difference this time around is that Millien is the captain of Black Widows, which he was not the captain of the Rebels last season. His skills as a captain showed up right away in the opening night of the season, as his top two picks balled out.

With the fifth overall pick in the draft, Millien selected Sam Longwell. He went off for 39 points on 16-24 shooting, adding five rebounds. Snaking around in the second round, Millen selected rookie Arinze Obiora. He had no struggles in his UH debut, scoring 21 points on 9-13 shooting, adding 11 rebounds. Millien struggled as a player in this game, putting up a stat line of 6/13/6 on 2-11 shooting. If he can play like that and the Black Widows still win, it could mean trouble for the rest of the draft league.

Ajao will have to get used to being a go-to scorer, which was not a role he had to embrace in the past two championship-winning seasons. He had to pick sixth out of six teams this season, so he wasn’t able to draft one of the few elite scorers in the league. During the spring season, Ajao was able to draft Shane Coleman, who averaged a team-high 24.8 points per game. In the summer, Ajao drafted Tommy Hubbard, who put up a team-high 28 points per game.

Ajao averaged 20.3 points per game during those two seasons on 53% shooting, so he’s more than a capable scorer. In his first trial run as the main scorer, Ajao scored 28 on 10-22 shooting. That’s a good start, but it still wasn’t enough to get Buckets Galore a win. There’s plenty of season left, but this clearly won’t go as smoothly as the past two seasons for Buckets Galore and Ajao.