Taipans knock off the Wildcats, 76 – 67
The Wildcats set off to play in a place that doesn’t hold a history of great results, having only won their last encounter in Taipan Land as one of very few over them in their history.
The Taipans were looking to take advantage of the Cats loss to the league leading Breakers the previous round hoping to keep their opponents from gaining confidence to rally a victory.
Usually it’s the Cats who keep their opponents from scoring, this week it was the Taipans defensive effort combined with a mediocre Cats offence that saw them to victory.
With a few players only just proving fit for the game and carrying niggling injuries, the Cats, while having pretty much a full roster were feeling the effects from their lack of offensive cohesion, the frontcourt mismatch was where the Cats hoped to gain an advantage, Kevin Lisch lead the way with 16pts and Matt Knight was again consistent with 13pts 7reb.
Jesse Wagstaff continued his recent good form with a reasonable 12pt outing off the bench but also was nonexistent on the boards with just 1 rebound, Luke Nevill had 12pts and also was less than effective rebounding with only 3, if the Wildcats are going to stay in consideration for a finals birth, the lack of rebounding is something that needs to be addressed.
The Taipans however were playing to stay in the playoff race and after being finalists in last year’s competition, not making the finals is not an option they want to consider.
Lead by import Jamar Wilson who willed the Taipans to victory while scoring 24pts 4reb 4ast, Wilson was playing with a vigour that his team mates got behind, were it not for his 7 turnovers his stat line would have looked much better.
Ian Crosswhite was having a hard time offensively against the Wildcats front court and had only 8pts, but he had 12reb and 6ast to go with it, Alex Loughton was the only other double figure scorer for the whole Taipans team but great contributions from the Taipans team defensively had the Wildcats playing the Taipans half court game and keeping them from their run and gun offence.
Good game planning on both ends of the floor got the Taipans this win and with this confidence teams who are scheduled to play in Cairns had better hope their confidence doesn’t keep growing, if it does, it could be a long night on the pine in Taipan Land.
Blaze defeat the Kings, 84 – 72
The Blaze believe they are championship material, and they are sure starting to play like they believe their own hype, while not being the greatest team defensively, there is no denying when they are clicking offensively, they are exceptionally hard to stop, unfortunately for the Kings, they got the hard to stop version this round.
With the Kings looking to bring back their team for continuity in the next few season, they have done their due diligence in attempting to sign Anatoly Bose and Jerai Grant for the foreseeable future, with both young players going from strength to strength and gradually progressing in their respective careers, the future of the kings is looking bright, if they can keep Grant and Khazzouh together, their front court pairing will be one most teams will grow to fear.
Bose lead the way for the Kings with another fantastic performance solidifying his contention for the Rookie of the Year award with 22pts 3reb 4ast and was 64% from the field including 3/6 from beyond the 3pt arc.
Julian Khazzouh continues to put up numbers, and while not the same dominance he asserted before his departure for an NBA trial, any coach would take 16pts 9reb from his man in the middle any night, youngster Den Madgen continues to fill the gap left by the injured Aaron Bruce, Madgen with 14pts 4reb 4ast and Jerai Grant, while not having his best game offensively held down the glass with 11reb to go with his 9pts.
While this was a loss the Kings weren’t hoping for, the fact that their play is only getting better and their young core is stepping up makes them a dangerous matchup every week, something positive to take into the future.
The boys from the Gold Coast came out ‘Guns A Blazin’ and were lead by their flamboyant import point guard Adris Deleon, who in recent weeks had been playing at a lower level than expected from him but who showed he is still a player you have to plan for, Deleon had a team high 29pts to go with his 5reb and 8ast.
Adam Gibson has seen a return to form in recent weeks, Gibbo had 17pts 3reb and 9ast to show why he is the league leader in the assist category, our old mate Wortho did what Wortho does, just under his season averages but 12pts 7reb is numbers when shot at 71% from the field is not something to be picky about, efficiency was the password for Wortho on this night.
Will Hudson rounded out the scorers with 10pts but only managed 3reb, Anthony Petrie didn’t have a great night offensively but him and Hudson increasing their productivity on the boards and playing good defence is something that is going to be needed if the Blaze are going to make that next step into the upper echelon of the league and be considered as one of the elite teams.
Hawks take out the Breakers, 80 – 64
What a difference a week can make, last round the Hawks just seemed down and out, this round, they took out the top team in the league with a similar scoreline they beat them too in their last encounter, maybe the Hawks have become giant killers, maybe not, either way they have the Breakers number, something no other team in the league can attest to having.
The Breakers unbelievably were held to just 64 points despite having 4 double figure scorers, a point guard who most weeks gets close to a triple double who happened to have zero assists and who also lead the team in rebounding to go with a mismatch at the centre position with a usually productive 7 footer off the bench who provided nothing more than a look of a training dummy.
Gary Wilkinson once again lead the way for the Breakers with his 16pts but his 4reb were not the rebounding numbers he would have hoped for to go along with his team high point total.
The other double figure scorers all just happened to put up 12pts a piece, Darryl Corletto, Cedric Jackson and Thomas Abercrombie must have all been told to channel the 3 Amigo’s from Coach Lemanis for some team unity and score the same number of points.
Not much more can be said about the Breakers in this game, all the kudos for this game belongs to the Hawks.
And of those Hawks one player deserves recognition for his unbelievable performance, that player was Oscar Forman, who had an almost perfect game with his 29pts 7reb shooting 11/12 (92%) from the field including an amazing 7/7 from 3pt, Forman, who played for the Breakers in recent seasons was just unstoppable against his old team and lead the Hawks revival back to respectability.Ayinde Ubaka who is finding his feet with his new team and Joevan Catron were the only other double figure scorers for this game, Ubaka with 10pts and Catron with 15pts, but this night belonged to Forman who must have felt like standing on the bow of a ship after his game and screaming “I’m the King of the world” considering the way he took the wind out of the Breakers defence’s sails.
It’s no secret that we here at CBAB have a soft spot for the Hawks, we love to see the little guy take on the big guy and win, small market teams like this are what makes the league and it’s rivalries exciting, well done to the boys from the Gong, we hope this is the type of performance we can expect every week from such a well respected historic club.
Adelaide 79, Townsville 74
The 36ers have broken what seemed list a 47 game losing streak to overcome the Crocs by 5 points in a close game. Townsville have had the better of the 36ers in both their encounters over the last few rounds and its plausible that Adelaide was simply going to show up with all things connecting.
Well to be fair, all things weren’t actually connecting for the 36ers; their 13/21 from the line for 62% is still pretty terrible. If you didn’t enjoy this game or say that if didn’t tickle your fancy then we call you liar. With Jacob Holmes tying the game at the line with 40 seconds to go all bums were on the edge of their seat, then watching the Crocs fluff their chances was priceless.
With the final minute fizzle aside the reason the Crocs lost this are as follows:
They didn’t move the ball enough, too much individual play
0 second chance points (the 36ers 0 points off turnovers slightly negates this)
Gill going cold down the stretch
Diamon Simpson led the charge finishing with 19 points and hauling in 12 rebounds whilst Daniel Johnson added to the 36ers dominance inside adding a further 20 points. When the Crocs provided some resistance inside the ball was kicked out to Darren NG who went 5/8 from outside to finish with 19 points from off the bench.
Eddie Gill played most the game but his tired legs went 1/7 in the fourth, regardless Gill finished with 17 points and 5 assists. Elvin Mims scored 19 and Jacob Holmes worked away inside finishing with 16 points and 12 boards. The Crocs find themselves just outside the top 4 and a win next week could see them return.
Can’t Buy a Damn Thing Award
Shawn Redhage has had a very up and down season and this week his game was very down. In fact, 1/9 from the field and 4 turnovers Redhage had a game he and fantasy basketball team owners would rather forget. With Shawn being his own harshest critic I would be careful I were the Kings who are coming to town next round.
Gimme My Change Award
It is true the basketball world lost its ‘Linnocence’ this week and had their serve of ‘Lin and Tonic’ and have peddled their ‘Linsights’ all over the net, however there were some other notable performances this week.
This week’s award is kind of a tie, we give the award to not only a team, but also to a player from that team, and the award goes to the Hawks and to Oscar Forman.
The unbelievable individual performance from Forman to rally his team to an epic victory over the top team in the league is the good old David versus Goliath tale that we all love.
Forman with his near perfect game is something the Hawks have been missing recently but it awoke the sleeping giant and drove the Hawks to a fantastic victory.
We congratulate both Forman and the Hawks for their effort to keep the Hawks respectability as a team and for proving that sometimes the little guy does have a punchers chance and that the size of the fight in the dog (or Hawk) is what matters.
