Hoop Addict
Years ago
Sabres men down Lions in shootout - Other results?
The Sabre lads got up over Centrals 128-105 in a high scoring affair at Pasadena this evening.
Darren Ng led the way with some smooth shooting on his way to 37 points @ 63% from the field. Brett Maher also lined up and after a slow start, began to find his feet in the 2nd half. He didn't quite seem match fit, but still managed to score 13 points & pull off some very crisp assists. Marcus Hakkendorf was very efficient for his 14 points, while Oscar Forman seemed to go through the motions for 8 points & 10 boards. Smylie had only 20 minutes & racked up 10 boards in that time, but also had 6 turnovers. Todd Gower played reasonably well for his 13 points but as is customary for Todd, had a couple of unnecessary sooks & one outburst after being fouled by Wilkey. The Sabres bench was also impressive in the last quarter, racking up 39 points.
For Centrals, Jye Watson led their scoring with 25 points on 11/16 FGs, and contributed 6 rebounds and 5 assists in a pretty polished performance. I still think he'd struggle at NBL level, because he relies quite a bit on posting up smaller ABL guards, but he certainly finds ways to score at ABL level. Justin Wilkey & Matt Atkins hit 21 each, while Mark Egel had 14 points in 17 minutes on 75% shooting.
Despite obviously being outclassed by a far more talented Sturt outfit, I think you have to admire the Lions for playing the game hard for 48 minutes & rotating through some younger guys (Hoffman, Cameron). They played hard on D, but just had no way of containing Ng, and beyond that Sturt just had contributors everywhere.
A lot of the stat categories were very similar : Rebs 44-43 Sturt, To's 19 (Centrals)-16 (Sturt) but the most glaring difference was in FT's, where Sturt had 47 attempts & converted 37 of them (79%) compared with Centrals only shooting 25 & making 19 (76%).
A pretty lackluster event, really. Centrals played hard in a lost cause & Sturt seemed content to only do what was necessary to get the win.
In other results - the Sturt women defeated Centrals by 40ish in a scrappy affair (78 turnover I hear?) and I have just heard South whacked Woodville by 40-odd with Scanlon dropping 51. Apparently KB got ditched? Any details on that or other games?
