Great setup with everyone being excited about Hodge, and this being a live game on TV!! Id expect the 6ers to win with or without Hodge, but would be a huge bonus if he can hit the ground running, and produce.
36ers by 22pts

Sixers by 14. Hodge pobably won't play much but it'll be great to see his first game. Looking forward to it.

Siixers by 8. Balls for a double double.

LOL Balls is a double double on legs!

With 4 games still to play against the top 3 teams (the Bullets twice), tonight's game is one they definitely cannot lose. A loss tonight and they may as well have already given up the season. While many games so far have been labelled "must win", tonight's game will be the one to indicate what the post season holds. Luckily, 3 of these top 4 games are at home and with the addition of Hodge, particularly after he has had a reasonable time to adjust to the 36ers game and get over any travelling problems, I would expect these to be won as well. If people cannot be that optimistic about winning home games against top teams, then what's the big deal about making the playoffs?

I know this has been covered before, but does anyone know any decent pubs that would be showing the game, ideally somewhere east of the city. I've been out of the Adelaide pub scene for years and have no idea which places have tv's and show games and that type of thing.

Am thinking the casino as a last resort.

Cheers.

Cool, that could be an option, thanks.

Coopers ale house is also a good place to watch the sixers. Massive schnitty, beer and ball. Good times!

Good luck to Brad in his comeback. Hope he is the only shining light for the Dragons tho.
I'd love to say the Sixers by plenty but i think there will only be a basket or two in it.

I think the Dragons will be more hungry to win. But i said that about west Sydney and we took care of them so im happy to keep using reverse Physcology :P Dragons by 12

Dragons will suck again tonight, 6er's by 15+. Hammer to have a massive one though.

Seven players in double figures on saturday, sixers must be confident. Add a confident winner type in Hodge, you'd expect we would win by about 20.

Hope Julius is playing , not listed on dear old nbl.live scores, of course.

nbl radio is on for this game if you want to try.

We're stuffed. They have 5 players to our 4 again (yes, another NBL live joke).

PS. Player " " just hit a sweet jumper. Welcome to the team.

31-23 at quarter time. Ballinger big for Adelaide. 19 of 33 shot Dragon shot attempts coming from Heal (7) and Ingles (12). Ingles on track for 48 shot attempts for the game!

just nbl.com.au isnt working for me

ballinger on 20pts still in 2nd qtr!

Try this link: http://www.nbl.com.au/boxscores.aspx?mid=7823

hodge = ugly ass jumper

63-47 half-time lead. Ballinger 22, Dench 14 in a big second quarter. Groves 13, Ingles 12 for the home team.

Once again we've got a good spread of scorers, & as a bonus, their highest scorer is on 4 fouls.

Hmm my last post was anonymous. The login thing on this forum is kinda buggy.

It's looking good tonight because Ballinger looks to be our main scorer, but Dench has already given us 14 points and so Maher, Copeland and Ng haven't had to shoulder too much scoring responsibility - this bodes well for the second half in case the Dragons actually decide to play some defence on Ballinger.

Hodge looks like a very good distributer of the ball. We dont need another outstanding jump shooter as we have maher and ng for that reason. He will give plenty of open shots in weeks to come...he has already pulled off a couple of nice passes. I want to see him get to the hoop though, hasnt really had a chance yet. Ballinger is just a freak scorer...though there is little to no defence from South. Dench looking confident, and doesnt that change the way he plays!!!

Halftime, sixers up 47-63 Ballenger on 22, DENCH 14!!

only 8 now!

Dench is doin alright, just scored another jumper on heal's head.... apparently he hasnt missed yet? the live scores say he he is 6/12?

Ballinger is on a tear, he is on fire!!!
No sign of Hill on court yet :(

Didn't last time we take on south ballinger get 42 points? He is on that track again...
Those live scores are screwed... tehyre making dench look bad with the amount of shots he's taken and no way ballinger is 13/33 and ingles is 4/18

Sixers up 88 - 81 end of the 3rd.

I can't see Hodge listed anywhere. Is he playing?

Back to 88-81 at 3-quarter time. 36ers need a hero to step up.

90 a piece early in the fourth.

Lets hope its building up to a good finish!
Smyth with a timeout with 2 seconds left???!?!!?!?!? Smyth?!?!?!?

Ballinger has shot 35 shots.

Why is he off the floor

Dench seems to be having a good game. Hodge has performed first game.

A big Dench 3 to put Adelaide out to 108-104. Now has 23 points.

Ballanger hasnt shot 35 shots. NBL box score screwed. Dench only missed 1 shot and wat does NBL scorboard show..... yerrr ;)

113-108 with a minute remaining. Smyth calls a timeout (or was it Davidson?).

The live scores count each made shot as 2 attempts and a miss as 1 attempt, see dench is 10/21 on live scoring when he is really 10/11

Ballinger is 13/35 so he probalby is really 13/22

DENCH - PLAYER OF THE GAME!

Nice win for the guys. Good way to welcome Hodge to the team.

yay. that was too close but a win is a win. Hopefully they can continue to build.

Axe beheads the Dragons. Huge game.
Free Low Cal Humble Pie for those interested. ; )

Sixers shouldn't have let it slide, but Axel Dench! What a game from him! He hit the big 3 and a jumper towards the end when they were needed. 25 points.. the game to remember in a season to forget for him.

Yeah, I cannot understand so many people getting stuck into Dench all year, he was always playing so well! But on a serious side, it was so important that he played like he did tonight, a loss would have been most certainly curtains.
A win is a win, but when one considers who we were playing tonight, we must not get too carried away. Too early to make any comment on Hodge as yet in my opinion. It would have been foolish to expect him to come out and burn first up.
Ballinger's first half was brilliant, but as seems to happen often with our team, he was starved of the ball a lot in the second half.
No doubt also it was Sutton's most effective game this season!

Well-deserved POTG for Axe. He really did win the game for us, not only his total game but making the big plays at the end when it was all on the line. He just has to keep it up now!

Didnt see the Game but its GREAT to hear Dench put in back to back performances, bout time his shots were dropping for him.
Deserves a good welcome when he plays at home next time.

If the team can keep doing what they are doing, with a few of the bench players really picking up the slack we could goto the finals and actually be an outside chance.

I don't believe it, no comments from TR yet. He must be on holidays somewhere in Wandin Valley. I don't think they have broadband out there yet......(something to do with the rabbits)

I cannot believe someone hasn't tried to bag Phil Smyth yet. Surly someone can find some reason, we allowed a team back into the game (on their home court) after having a 16 point lead, and heaven forbid the other team show some spirit.

Someone has to have something negative to say. It wouldn't be the same.

Win IS A WIN new player on board, playing 2nd game on road, we'll take that

Joe M, he should have called a timeout when the lead was cut from 16 to 9, but he didn't.

A great effort from the boys. Ballinger's first half was sensational (supercoach Shane Heal might wanna think about instructing his players to be, you know, somewhere in the same vicinity as Ballinger next time). We did again fall into the trap of going away from him in the second. Dench was awesome, 10-11 and there were some tough shots in there too. Cooper was solid, Mottram boarded well but contributed nothing offensively. Copeland was a sparkplug, his back to back threes in the third quarter were arrogant brilliance. Ng seems to have settled nicely into the backup role at both guard spots. Davidson didn't have his best night, but hit two big threes in the last. Maher's long range jumper seemed short all night, but I'll take 18 points on an off night. Hodge added an energy level that certainly never came from Mike Chappell. His jumper is flat out ugly, but he caused Ingles (one of the best off the dribble players in the league) a great deal of trouble. He got into the lane a couple of times, but may have a tendency to over-dribble. All in all, his was a first game that was quite encouraging.

For South, Jacob Holmes' game was a monster. Hendrix went on a tare in the third, and Groves punished us whenever he was given any space. Ingles was made to work really hard for his 21. Herbert did nothing, Burston always looks like he forgot to put in his false teeth, and at times his movements are so robotic that it is almost funny.

Does anyone else think that Shane Heal doesn't have the slightest idea what he's doing coaching that team? Given that this was Brad Hill's first game back, against his old club, wouldn't you think you'd through him in and see what he can do? Between Heal and Luke Martin (Shane is apparently desperate to have a backup who is shorter than him) the Dragons got nothing from the point. His timeouts were, quite frankly, less productive than Phil's in terms of the information that was communicated to his players. I don't know how much Guy Molloy is doing either, but Michelle Timms contributes nothing "we've got four team fouls guys". Thanks Michelle, I can read a scoreboard.

Teams like Wollongong and Singapore have the excuse of not having much in terms of talent. But the Dragons do have some very decent players, and they are a joke. Our road record is like 3 and 100 for the past two years, and they let us DOMINATE this game for the most part.

Anyway, a good win, but we'll need at least 8 more in my opinion in order to make the playoffs. But, over the past four games, the signs have been encouraging.

Mutley, I agree with most of what you say except perhaps for this line, "Given that this was Brad Hill's first game back, against his old club, wouldn't you think you'd through him in and see what he can do? Mutley, Heal has an advantage over you in that he has watched Hill train leading up to this game. Hill may not have been ready to be given any court time.

I also disagree that Heal does not have the slightest idea on what he's doing. I think he has half an idea, that is the half an idea that he imparted on his team in the 2nd half. Don't forget that as well as the 36ers played last night and resulting in a win, we were outscored in 2 quarters. Either we slackened off to let them get back into it, or Heal showed half a game of brilliance to work their way back into the game. He is inconsistent but does have some idea.