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Breakers hold out Blaze, 109 – 93
With top spot secured one could assume that the Breakers would take the foot off the pedal to conserve some fuel for the playoffs. Those people would be mistaken.
New Zealand had their way against a patchy Gold Coast defence shooting the ball at 58% for the game. Thomas Abercrombie and co meant business.
The Blaze weren’t your average Blaze. This was a Blaze unit led by the other weirdo with the beardo, Anthony Petrie. Mark Worthington racked up some early fouls, Adris Deleon couldn’t hit the side of a barn, Gibbo needed some time to get going and even then it was at minimum output, so who else was going to stand up? Stephen Hoare? Um, yes, he did stand up, good to see old Hoarey play like the man of yesteryear.
Then with a little less than a minute to go the first half the referee’s got to blow their unsportsmanlike foul whistles, pinging both Tom Garlepp and Stephen Hoare, much to the delight of the resident Breaker fans.
When Wortho and Gibbo finally joined Hoare and Petrie on their trans-Tasman crusade it was not only too late, but too weak. After piling on 32 points in the third quarter the Breakers could afford to ease up in the fourth and still run out comfortable 16 point winners.
Thomas Abercrombie put up an efficient 24 points whilst an arrogant Gary Wilkinson piped in another 20. Cedric Jackson did a little bit of everything, but a lot of passing racking up 12 dimes. CJ Bruton, the week of announcing his contract extension fired up 14 points at a good clip form outside.
Anthony Petrie held the Blaze with 18 points and 7 boards whilst Stephen Hoare scored 13 points. Goulding and Gibson both had 14 and Deleon turned the ball over 5 times on his way to 12 points.
Wildcats annihilate Crocs, 101 – 66
In front of a packed crowd at the jungle Peter Crawford got off to an exciting start burying what felt like three ball after three ball. The Wildcats shaky offence took a little time to get its legs and when it did, it was giving Crawford a hard time keeping up, but a challenge old PC accepted.
PC’s 12 point first quarter took its wear and tear on his body, his scoring dried up which spelled trouble for the Crocs. Trying to make a point about nothing Coach Woolpert decided to lay some stern words to the referees trying to get the tech foul. Soon enough the refs granted Woolpert’s wish and give him the T, Shawn Redhage missing both of the resulting free throws and the game carried on just fine till half time, the exeption was a huge dunk by Wildcat guard, Damian Martin over 7 odd feet of Schenscher.
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| Anyone remember this one |
This is where things got ugly for the Crocs, real ugly. They showed no energy, not fight and just let the Wildcats have their way with them. Every Wildcat troubled the scorers, but more importantly troubled the Crocs. Ben Allen sat on the bench watching the game with one eye, not because he is bias but because he copped a finger in the eye in the first half.
Kevin Lisch was chopping and slicing the Croc defence on his way to 19 points and still found time to drop four assists. Luke Nevill won the battle of the Big Lukes scoring 14 points and Jesse Wagstaff and Shawn Redhage both added 13 points each.
Peter Crawford’s 19 points looks inpressive but only 7 of those came after quarter time and Todd Blanchfield chipped in with 18 points. Everyone else was stock exchange, everyone but Allen recorded turnovers, everyone but Blanchfield shot below 50% and everyone has lost to the Wildcats four times this season.
Blaze edge 36ers in Thriller, 84 – 83
Needing a win to find their way in to the playoffs the Blaze got to work against the Adelaide 36ers, making things count in the first quarter.
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| OK, now let’s get the Blaze to do the same |
Against their better judgement, both team looked to score from the outside, the Blaze going 2/19 (11%) whilst the 36ers were a slightly better 7/22 (32%). Unable to the utilize their twin towers the 36ers were outrebounded by the undersized Blaze 36 – 45. What is odd about this isn’t the Blaze getting the boards, it is the fact that there were more offensive rebounded plucked out of the air and picked off the ground than there were defensive boards. In other words, of the 81 rebounds in the game 41 (51%) were offensive boards. Say it with us, “Box Out”
Adelaide clawed back in to the game and even held the lead. With 10 seconds to go the Blaze, trailing by one call a time out and set up a play. The ball is inbounded and Wortho eventually drives to the hoop, launches over a makeshift 36ers wall and banks it off the glass with two seconds left for the one point lead. After another timeout the 36ers botch up the play and don’t offer a shot, a stunned crowd can only watch as Wortho won the game.
With a quiet night on the boards Mark Worthington made it count on the scoreboard, scoring a team high 21 points. Will Hudson found ‘beast mode’ and went for 20 points and 13 boards whilst Adam Gibson rattled off 12 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. The Blaze are off to the playoffs.
As usual, Adelaide were led by their big men, Diamon Simpson took on 21 points and 11 rebounds and Daniel Johnson scored 18. Chris Warren added 12 and Mitch Creek added some spark with 11 points. After a double next week the 36ers can find a nice place to watch the playoffs. May we suggest somewhere at the front?
Kings defeat Taipans, 80 – 74
With the Taipans playing for a sniff of a playoff berth and the Kings playing for respectability this game had more at stake than just any other.
The Taipans who had played the week prior without Alex Loughton and Ian Crosswhite against the Wildcats needed a good showing to put them into a tussle with the Crocs for the final playoff spot.
But even with their big men back in the line up they just couldn’t overcome the beast that is the front court of the Sydney Kings.
The Taipans were lead by the stellar play of Jamar Wilson who top scored for the game with 27pts to go with his tied team high 9reb with Aaron Grabau and 4ast.
Alex Loughton was productive offensively which he had been sorely lacking of late and finished with 17pts, but he was mediocre on the glass with just 2reb, not a stat that the coaching staff would have been happy with.
The Taipans at times look like the team that made it to the grand final in the previous season, other times they look plain awful, this was one of those awful nights that would have been a whole lot worse if not for Jamar Wilson.
As we have said before, the Kings are going to be a team to reckon with, with arguably the best and most skilled front court in the league with Julian Khazzouh and Jerai Grant, and they showed why teams next season better beware in this game with their combination of size and athleticism that is sure to create matchup problems for most teams.
Khazzouh notched up yet another double double with his 17pts 10reb 2blk and 5ast and his running mate Grant had a team high 21pts 9reb, if that level of production keeps up with the emergence of Anatoly Bose and the return of Aaron Bruce, the Kings are going to be a team to be reckoned with.
Bose who is by far the front runner for Rookie of the Year had 18pts and a team high 11reb, he and Ben Madgen rounded out the double figure scorers for the Kings, Madgen had 12pts to contribute when his team needed some additional scoring.
So with this loss, last year’s grand finalists the Cairns Taipans are officially out of the playoff race, quite a slide for a team once again expected to make the playoffs, is it due to injury, lack of talent, we don’t think so, but it boils down to what has seemed to plagued them year after year, consistency week in and week out.
The Kings should be smiling all the way into next season, with most of core group locked up, young players who are future stars of the league and a long time club legend as the new head coach, all is looking good in Sydney town, but we have all seen that amounting talent doesn’t always make for a great team, let’s just hope the Kings don’t become the NBL version of the New York Knicks who have so much talent but a real lack of cohesion to take them to the next level.Hawks victorious over the Tigers, 71 – 61
With no chance of making the playoffs for either team, it was a display of pride and competitive spirit for this game, with the announcement of Matt “Soup” Campbell’s imminent retirement after the end of the season, the Hawks were out to send him out in a grand way with a road victory against the struggling Tigers in their own house.
The Tigers woes this season are well documented, starting off in such a well publicised way with the inclusion of Boomers Star Patty Mills to being the team chewed up, leftover and spat out from the mouth of the league.
The Tigers once again just haven’t been able to get any momentum going after the loss of Mills, and with Liam Rush out this week due to injury, their stocks were depleted even further.
Cam “Trigger” Tragardh was once the leading scorer in the league in a seemingly unstoppable offensive onslaught but has slowly started to struggle as the year went on, having the play the starting centre position has taken its toll and Trigger seems to be suffering from fatigue, his lack of rebounding and slow decline in production proves that.
Trigger just managed double figures in this game with just 11pts and 2reb in 27+ minutes on the court, further strengthening our view that he is completely spent for the season.
The only other player who scored in double figures and had any sort of production worth mentioning was young up and comer Benny Lewis, who is proving that with court time he is not only an exciting young player but has the ability to produce numbers, Lewis had a team high 15ptsbut provided nothing more other than a steal and a turnover, the rest of the Tigers were so stock exchange we won’t even get into talking about any of them.
The Hawks must be on cloud 9 after this gutsy win, doing it all for the man who saved their club when it was on the brink of collapse, without Matt “Soup” Campbell there would be no Wollongong Hawks and we are happy such a great community team was saved to prove that sometimes all it takes is community spirit and a champion to steer it.
In a fitting last road performance, Campbell scored in double figures to be the only player other than Oscar Forman to do so, he had 10pts 2ast and 2st in his final road performance.
Oscar Forman returned to form with an 18pt outing but reverted back to the Big O of old returned with just 1reb in his 20 minutes of court time.
The Hawks were playing for pride and they certainly showed a whole lot of it, we congratulate them on rising to the occasion and wish Matt Campbell all the best for his future endeavours and thank him for keeping the Hawks a part of the NBL where they belong.
Matt Campbell, we salute you!!
Gimme My Change Award
The award was hard this week, but for a bit of nostalgia we had to give it to the Perth Wildcats, now we understand you are going to think we are biased, but hear us out.Not only have the Cats notched up an unbelievable 26thconsecutive playoff appearance, they managed to do it by 35pts against the Townsville Crocs who they may be facing in the semi finals depending on the results of the last round, talk about a confidence booster.
The Wildcats have also solidified home court advantage for the playoffs to all team bar the Breakers with the locking up of 2ndspot on the ladder for the 2011/12 season and possibly could have the front runner for MVP in Kevin Lisch playing some amazing basketball right now.
Now if that’s not worthy of an award, then we don’t know what else to say.
We would also like to make an honourable mention to one of our favourite followers and occasional star of some of our pranks and pictures, our old mate Wortho, who hit a huge crunch time game winner to see his Gold Coast Blaze get the win and hold onto 3rd place on the ladder for just a little bit longer, well played Wortho, we knew you’d come good some day.
Can’t Buy a Damn Thing Award
The award this week goes to the Melbourne Tigers who just can’t seem to catch a break let alone buy a rebound.
The Tigers were the worst defensive rebounding team in the league and the 2nd worst offensive rebounding team in the league for the season.
Matter of fact, in almost every team statistical category the Tigers failed to make the top 4 in any category except Turnover %, to which amazingly they were under the league average and assist % to which they were just above.
So they have the ability to share the ball, they just don’t seem to have the ability to rebound it, so maybe they need to focus more on playing defence and rebounding and the offence will flow, you can’t control the game without being competitive on the boards, so without being competitive on the boards the Tigers just aren’t very competitive at all.
