20th Game: vs Prospectors

The New Season 2007, and with the Social now split into three grades, we have found ourselves in the White grade facing just one of the same teams from last season. All the other teams appear to be new teams for this year.

Our first game on the 1st of February was against the Prospectors at 6 o’clock. They were wearing tops with Ballarat on them, and I think they borrowed them from the centre. Our team consisted of Dave, Simbo, James, Drew, and Tim. We started with four players as Tim was a few minutes late due to the early game. Harbs was away for this week. The opening tip had to be redone as they missed the ball at the top of the arc. The opponents got the first clear possession of the game, and scored first with a three pointer, but James and Simbo quickly scored to take the lead which went back and forth for awhile. We stretched the lead out to 6 or 7 points near the end of the first half, and ended the half up 21 to 16. Tim had 3 fouls at the half with two of them while trying to stop their #5 after he got past me, after that Tim decided that we should swap in defence, but they changed their attack. Their #5 appeared to be their best and most experienced player, as he controlled most of their plays, but also took the ball himself launching shots off balance. After he hit the first 3 ptr we thought that he might continue to hit them, but only made one more 3ptr. He probably scored most of their points though for the game. At half time Simbo had 6 points, Dave had 6 points, Tim had 4 points and James had 5 points.

There were two jump ball (possession arrows) in the first half, and so we started with the ball in the second half. We had a bit of a plan for the rest of the game, and it kinda worked. Keeping the defence tight and helping out when we had the ball. Several times Simbo got the rebound in defence, and had the open player behind him but kept passing in front through the danger zone. Despite that Simbo played a superb game scoring a further 15 points in the second half for a total of 21. He took several rebounds at both ends of the floor which allowed him to get some easy baskets under the ring. We managed several fast breaks in the second half with James in control of the ball and passing off for the assists. Simbo was on the receiving end of many passes and also was there to clean up the missed shots. Tim scored a total of 8 points, while Dave also had 8 points and James made 12 points. Drew launched several shots but couldn’t make the shots, although most of the shots were rebounded by one of our players. The couple of fouls Drew picked up could possibly have been deliberate. A highlight of the game was with about 4 seconds left of the clock, the tall guy of the other team went to launch a 3 pointer, when Drew came from nowhere and got his hand to the ball to block the shot cleanly and this game us the last possession of the game. The final score was 49 to 33.
A great way to start the new year and hopefully a sign of things to come. We are looking forward to the making finals this season.