Short update

Well, I stopped posting in this blog as I had much less time to write in here.
The team is still going and last season we won a few games, but didn't make the finals.

This season we have been doing much better due in part to our better defense. We have now won four games in a row which is the most we have ever won as a team in a season, this also we are tied on points with Titans for 6th place and maybe also with Rosies for 5th, but will probably still be behind them on percentages.

What's been happening with Spuds?

So much has happened since I last posted in this blog. The season ended with a victory, and a new season started with some more challenges. They introduced the 10 points per player per half rule into the Social competition as of the 2nd round. Some mixed feedback about it has forced them to reconsider the rule. This rule actually cost us the chance of winning last week after James got his 10 points, which he reached with a 3ptr when on 8 so only 2pts counted for it. We lost the game by 10 points, but had James been allowed to score more then we might have won. One of the opponents actually said that afterwards, as for the last 5 minutes they didn't have to play defense on James, which meant it was almost like playing 4 on 5 basketball.

My personal game has had it's ups and downs. Early in the new season I scored two 3ptrs in a game, but then other times not even get close to the ring. Last week I took the ball up the court and launched it from a step inside the 3pt line and banked it in. As a team we have been playing considerably better, with some excellent defense and some shots that I find it hard to beleive actually go in.

30th Game: vs Trix

This game was played on the 19th of April at 9:20pm.
This was Dave's return game which meant we had six players. The Trix only had one win on the ladder which gave us a good shot at beating them. They were all younger guys and really had just one or two players that could shoot well. Simbo had a height advantage over all of them and therefore should have taken more rebounds and blocked their shots.

However, there were many occasions when they got an easy shot inside the key with a gap left open in our defense. That is what happens if one person moves out to a player without covering their butt.

Drew picked up four fouls for the game, of which two shouldn't have been called. One of the fouls was when the ball was whacked from a guy's hands and the only contact was made to the ball and his fingers which is classified as part of the ball. Therefore it shouldn't have been called. The other foul was one at half court which technically is a foul but by calling it actually disadvantages their team. That is because it allowed us to get back in defense.

The umpires weren't very good in this game. For one thing they didn't call any three second violations for the game, and I'm sure that both teams should have been penalised for that.

Our first half went in spurts, we got away well taking the first few scores, but about half way in our defense lapsed and allowed them to close the gap back up. We went into the halftime break leading 26 to 22. James had 8 points, Harbs and SImbo had 6 points, Dave had 5 including a free throw, and Tim had 1 point from a free throw.

The second half James was on fire, he single handedly scored 17 points in the half. Dave scored another 4 points, Harbs and Simbo each scored two more points. We had 25 in the half and conceeded 17.

29th Game: vs Aardvarks

We had heaps of trouble scoring in this game and lost 18 to 51.

28th Game vs Phoenix

This game was played on the 5th of April and we only had five players with Dave being away and Watson being unable to play on Thursday nights. It was a day when I really needed to have a rest as I had a bit of a flu type thing, but had no subs. We had Tim, Harbs, James, Drew and Simbo. The first half we scored just 10 points while Phoenix scored 28. James had six points, Harbs and Tim each had two points at the half.
The second half we played much better with Tim scoring four, Harbs scored 3 points including a free throw, and James scored another 12 points

We lost this game 31 to 60.

27th Game vs Rosies

This game was played on the 29th of March and with Dave unable to play due to his pending wedding, Age took his place on the court.

We started off quite well by scoring the first 8 points of the game, but then a lapse in defense and some fast breaks by the Rosies meant that we lost the lead. They had one really good player, but he wanted to do everything himself, and did score most of their points. So next time if we can stop him scoring then we have a better chance at winning.

Tim picked up four fouls in the first half, although one was probably meant for someone else. He managed to not foul out. In the first half Watson scored 11 points with two free throws, three 2s and a 3ptr. James scored 6 points, Simbo scored 5 which included a free throw. Age scored three of four free throws, Tim scored two points, while Harbs missed two free throws. Drew had a few shots but was unable to connect. We led at the half 27 to 26.

The second half we tried to stop the fast breaks, but there were still patches where they went on a run to stretch out their lead. We were holding on within 8 points until the final minute when they hit a couple more shots without us scoring to end on 60.

James scored 11 points with two 3ptrs, one free throw and two 2ptrs. This gave him 17 points for the game. Watson scored 6 points in the half including two free throws for 17 points in the game. Age, Harbs, and Simbo each scored 2 points in the half. Our final score was 50. This gives us 1 and 3 on the ladder since the new draw and puts us 8th.

It appears that the official score sheet has robbed us of another 2points. I wish that the people who score would get it right. There have been other games this year when the scoreboard showed a different score to what the sheet said. It hasn't changed the result in terms of win or loss, but just the percentage on the ladder which could determine the ladder position.

26th Game vs Saints

22nd March 2007

25th Game vs

15th March 2007

24th Game: vs The Outsiders

With the admin people at the Minerdome making a decision to make it so we don't have any Sunday games, they scrapped the old social grades and created new ones. This meant that we now have different teams in our grade, with the exception of just two who were in our old grade. Some of the teams from our grade last season are in the new grade too. The most annoying thing about this is that our first four weeks of the season count for nothing. They wasted our money.

This game versus the Outsiders was played on the 8th March 2007 at 9:20pm.

We had a full seven players for this game with Watson playing again. We started by losing the tip and having them score first.

One of the umpires for this game was pretty bad, he made alot of wrong calls.
Some of the decisions about who last touched the ball out of court went against us.

We didn't have a really crash hot game, although we had some patches where were scored a few in a row and played good defense. James was the standout again, scoring six points in the first half and another four in the second half.
Tim scored one of two free throws in the first half and two of two free throws in the second half. Dave scored two points in the first half, Simbo scored one of two free throws in the first half and two points in the second half.
Watson scored a 3ptr in the first half and another two points in the second half. Harbs scored two points in the second half.
At half time the score was 13 to 32, and the final score was 27 to 50.

Drew got a block that was in correctly called a foul which resulted in much frustration and Dave also got called for a foul on a block.

23rd Game: vs Exies Acmy

This game was on Sunday the 4th of March. It will be the last Sunday game of this season. The reason why we had a sunday game was the took in to many teams for the social competition and didn't have enough court times. They have decided that they will change the grades from now for the rest of the season by taking out all new teams from the thursday competitions and create a seperate Sunday competition for them, and this will mean that we will probably have to face the harder teams from now on.

Onto this game, we had six players for this game with the return of Harbs and Watson, but James didn't show up for the game.
The game started with their possession, and Harbs picked up a foul the first time they took the ball to the hoop.

Both teams struggled to score early on and after a few minutes there was still no score but 2 fouls to 4. There was an extremely high foul count with 8 on us and 12 on the Exies. Having Harbs and Watson on the floor gave us alot more running pace which helped with some fast breaks during the game.

Dave, and Simbo both scored four points, while Watson scored two and missed two free throws in the first half. We played in spurts and allowed them to get away in the middle of the half. The score at the half was 10 to 20.

Our second half had patches of great defense, but also saw their top scorer become a cherry picker for the fast breaks, he scored 17 points alone in the half, which also included a 3ptr which he was fouled on.

Part way through the half we decided to start playing man on man instead of zone, and it helped slow their scoring and gave us more opportunities to score. Tim scored 5 points with 3 of 4 free throws, Dave, Simbo and Watson each scored 4 in the half.

Drew hit a 3ptr, but unfortunately it was after a foul was called, but we may as well count it anyway since it made no difference to the result of the match.

Tim played exceptionally as he got several steals as they tried the long pass down the floor as well as dishing off for the assists.

The final score was 30 to 46.

We were on top of the White ladder on percentage with the same number of wins as Excies, but now that they are changing the grades we will probably be towards the bottom of the new ladder after this week.

Next game this Thursday.

As a side note Dave and myself are playing the Indoor Cricket semi final tonight (Monday 5th March) at 6:45pm.

22nd Game: vs Air Force One

This game was played at the Arch Sports Centre and for this game Simbo got a guy from his church (Jarrod) to play for us. Sure he has the skills and is energetic with youth, but there were times throughout the game where he tried to do to much himself and not pass the ball.

Anyway, this meant we had a substitute and it was good to not have to play the whole game, but it also creates a certain level of annoyance with some players not spending long enough on the bench. I ended up playing just 23 of the 34 minutes in the game.
The game was only 34 minutes because i was late and the team hadn't paid the sheet on time. This also meant that we started 5 points behind. This didn't matter to much as we scored first and took the lead about half way through the term. We restricted them to just three more points for the half, and we scored 19. The foul count at the half was 3 to 8. Jarrod had 10 points with one 3ptr and 1 of 4 free throws, Dave had two points which came from rebounding one of Jarrod's shots, James made 7 points including 1 of 3 free throws.

The start of the second half we were a bit lapse on our defense, and with a few three pointers by the opposition the gap closed a little bit. We regrouped after a timeout and managed to stop them and score ourselves to eek out the lead again. Jarrod made another 11 points including one 3ptr, Tim and Dave each scored 2 points, James scored another 8 points and missed a free throw, and Simbo made 6 points and missed two free throws. We ended up winning the game 51 to 32.

Maybe i'm a bit miffed that Simbo suggested that I sub off with 7 minutes remaining in the game, when I reckon he should have gone off to even out the bench time. Doesn't matter anyway since we won the game and that gives us 3 and 1 on the ladder and in second place behind Exies.