that reminds me, I need to put my bet on...

on that note, I can't see the Kings turning things around for this game... Once again a very frustrating end to a season...

This is a HUGE round and this game is going to be a big one.

Kings have offered so much, and delivered nothing but heartache for their fans. Garlepp would have to have the biggest heart of the team. The Crocs season just seems to be them assembling an IKEA cupboard without instructions and using a toothpick for an (ben) allen key.

The Crocs will want to pull something out of the hat for Jake's 400th. He certainly deserves his place in the sun, but along comes the Chill-train looking to be the moon of the eclipse. The pressure is more on the Crocs than the Kings to get the win in front of their fans. The Chill-train has been slowish out of the station since his return, but with plenty in the boiler, I'm expecting him to be leading all scorers tonight.

400 games is a great achievement and let's hope the big fella can find some space to sink an easy 15 footer to lift the crowd. Anyone who isn't nice to Jake tonight can expect a Julie Bishop death stare from Mrs Holmes.

Surprisingly, the Crocs are 3-0 over the Kings with a 15 point split. Let's not forget the Kings are on the Sunshine Swing so Cairns will be looking to make it 0-2 for the Kings. On paper, Kings should win, but Crocs will make this a clean sweep. Enjoy your 400th Jakey

Crocs will get them, they're the only team they have been consistently better than this year, head to head.

kings hopes of making the finals are ZERO!!!!!!

Appreciate your work Jack Toft! Bringing life to the game threads.

Kings are capable of so much but have disappointed too many times this season.
Can only hope that the most exciting player in the league Childress plays again next year. I think it would be fantastic to get Perry back again too. You have got to expect the first season out of college is going to be a struggle for most guys against professionals but if that is the type of import you target you should be aiming to keep them for multiple years to get the benefit.

Why is no one outside of myself talking about what a terrible job Dennis has done as a coach with this Crocs team?

People keep saying how well coached this Townsville team is, and how Dennis is a great coach.

What are they smoking, and can i get in on that?

I felt like no one noticed last year because the roster wasn't great, but i picked up on the little things he was doing wrong, and he's keeping up with the same shitty P&R coverage, the same plays, and the same insistence on never shooting threes.

Now it's plain as day because we have a good team on paper and there's no excuse, but no one cares.

This is actually going to be the last year of the Crocs.

And we are wasting it by having a playoff-capable roster be around the mark for the wooden spoon...

Not a great way to go out.

Then tonight we finally decide to shoot 3s and we go 5/28...

Man this team stinks.

Townsville's season if effectively over barring a miracle. A tough season for the Crocs on and off the court despite having some very good talent.

Kings see off Crocs' surge to stay alive

Not sure if I wanted Crocs or Sydney to win that one but the Crocs have had some great moments and from many Aussies so I have to go with them I guess. It's a given that Sydney with Childress will do well so respect to teams who do well without the ex NBA stars influence. And yes Gladness not performing so not in the equation for my comments above.

"the same insistence on never shooting threes."

The Crocs average 21 attempts a game. Their opponents average 20.

Their offense isn't predicated on it though, and when they take them they are not great shots.. It should be their point of attack. You never see them run actions to get all those elite shooters open shots. It's like Dennis has said "oh we have great shooters, they'll get open." So many of the threes we take are not set shots, they are off the dribble.

It should be the focal point of the offense: not Gladness, Vandy and Conklin post ups.

This team has 5 players that shot over 40% from deep last year. They should be blowing people away. That should be unguardable.

I think you overrate their talent Mick. If Markovic was playing like the second half of last season this would be a very good team, but he isn't.

I agree Dennis has chased his tail at times this season, trying to find an identity that fits, but with Markovic struggling I think they're only a couple of wins behind where they should be.

I'm not overrating their talent now: they have an immensely low basketball IQ across the board, their best leader is probably a 21 year old guard named Mitch Norton, and there are no elite defenders on the team.

I did overrate their talent going into the season though, because I just didn't realise how bad everyone was at passing / basketball IQ stuff, and that's been the story of the season. High turnovers and low assist numbers.

I'm just saying they are doing a really poor job of leveraging all those shooters. They should be blowing people out of the gym some games, and it has never happened. Sure, they will get blown out some times too because they couldn't guard a paper bag, but they should be a matchup nightmare every now and then and it's just not happening, because their offense stinks. I'm not going to get into the defense because this team will never be good at that, but they should be blowing people away every other game just on shooting alone.

With the way they space the floor, you rarely see anyone in the corner, let alone a guy in each corner at the same time.

Look at their shot chart after each game and all of their threes generally come from above the break:

http://www.fibalivestats.com/u/NBL/59998/sc.html

That's just one game, and it's always the same story.

Their spacing stinks, and they should be spacing the hell out of every possession with all those long elite shooters. Steindl and Blanchfield should be absolutely binging on corner threes, and the offense never puts them there.

It then makes Conklin's job doubly hard when he goes to work down low because the help defender doesn't have to worry about a guy in the corner when he helps off.

HOME TEAM
M. Norton: 3
T. Blanchfield: -13
B. Conklin: 12
M. Gladness: -8
C. Steindl: -18
S. Markovic: -10
L. Henry: 9
M. Djeric: 5
G. Vanderjagt: -2
J. Holmes: -18

ROAD TEAM
B. Madgen: 7
K. Perry: 0
J. Childress: 10
J. Duinker: 2
T. Garlepp: 10
J. Cadee: 2
C. Ellis: 4
N. Horvath: 0
D. Joyce: 5

Mick, you overrate the Crocs every pre-season and then come to Earth during every season. Not the only one (I bet on the Hawks to win the championship when I thought they might replace an import and get their roster-on-paper to perform!), but it is funny regardless.

paul, I believe Markovic has something of a problem off-court that is influencing his game this season.

Yeah, I've heard that too. It has really hurt the team because when he's firing the Crocs go to another level.

The thing I would be shattered about if I was a Crocs fan is how bad they are at high-low and lob passes. I would pull my hair out supporting that.

@Isaac: That's the frustration of being a fan haha. Anything I say about my team/s should be taken with a massive boulder of salt.

Yeah Markovic is going through some sort of problem, it was reported that he's seeing a sports psychologist about it, so maybe it's just a passion for the game thing? Who knows.

I'm a firm believer though that teams take on the identity of their leader, and our leader is more or less Markovic.

So what's our identity? Lazy, very poorly conditioned, but super talented?

That actually sounds about right...

Out of interest, the Crocs are third in the league in corner threes. They do seem to move there to get looks, rather than camping there to space the floor, but I think the biggest issue with Townsville's offence is careless turnovers rather than the mechanics.

Yeah that's obviously huge. I don't mind them when they're trying to force the action so much, but there are just so many unforced turnovers, especially in crunch time. So many times guys just get stripped in a one-on-one situations too, without too much pressure.

Where do you get stats like that from?

It's so hard to follow this league without proper data.

Everything is just per game box score stats or eye test...

The past two weeks they'd done a good job of not throwing silly lead passes to their running bigs, but kicking to the wing and getting early post feeds.

I'm halfway through the replay of last night's game but they've gone back to throwing speculators and Dennis is going nuts on the sidelines!

Now Mick, you're going to love this website, whoever does it does an awesome job:

http://crunchtimeshots.com/category/2014-15-shot-chart-statistics/

As much as I love the idea of having a Gladness type import rim protector I can't help but shake the feeling that the Crocs need to go after an import guard who can really take over a game in the final minutes.

I have seen so many Crocs games this year where they play a poor final five minutes (Adelade away, cairns last week, Sydney yesterday) and throw games away.

Obviously you keep Conklin so I think that the club would do well to go after a crowd pleasing, get bums on seats, flashy type import with Norton continuing as the understudy.

They had that in Markovic last season, particularly in the second half of the year. Assuming theyre in next season theyve got a tough choice to make at PG.

Of course we should be posting up Conklin, but sometimes we go to him just a little too much. Because he isn't a great passer, he can't find shooters out of double teams. We should be shooting more threes is all Im saying. When you have 5 x 40% 3pt shooters, you should be leveraging that by leading the league in attempts, especially when you can't play defense. And I'd rather see Conklin get the ball more often off more creative actions than just a traditional post up. The more threes you knock down, the easier it is for Conklin to find space inside, so everyone benefits.

But we definitely should NOT be posting up Vandy and Gladness, and we do that waaaay too much.