Saturday, June 21, 2008

Ex-UM Game #6 v Friends

Xballer League Game Update

Ex-UM's 6th game today was against Friends. Friends had 1 shooting guard (No. 15) who is very good at shooting (& making!) 2 pt fade away shots.

We knew his abilities from a friendly match he played (with Puchong BA) against UM recently. They also had a very tall (but thin) center.

We therefore adjusted by focusing our defense on No. 15 & boxing out No. 10. No. 15 still scored 14 pts. but what surprised us & allowed them to lead after the 1st quarter (15-14) & stay close the whole 1st half (UM led 30-25 at half) was their team captain No. 8. For the game he hit 7 3-pointers & 2 2-pointers for 25 points! And he shot 3 point shots at a very high percentage, often after 1 of us, & sometimes even after 2 of us had "flown-by".

At our end Chuan arrived late & as usual (whenever he arrives late) had a tough game. He played almost the whole 2nd quarter, had MANY close in, easy shots & free throws ... And missed them ALL! As a result we never could really get any separation from Friends.

Our bench too did not play well today.

Fortunately Pin, Ming Lip & Leong kept us in the game in the 1st half (the 3 combined for 23 points in the 1st half).

It took Chuan another 1/2 of the 3rd quarter before he finally got his game together. But once he got it together (starting with a couple of made free throws), he scored 17 straight points for us! We pulled out to a commanding 16 point lead after 3 quarters (51-35).

We started the 4th quarter with a few bench players. And we promptly started the 4th quarter with 4 straight turnovers allowing Friends to go on an 8-0 run to cut our 16 point lead down to 8 only!

We had to put the starters back in quickly and after 1 more turnover, managed to get the game back under control, with Chuan drawing fouls (and making free throws) and Pin, Ben & I trapping & stealing the ball back several times off our 122 half court zone press.

Friend's No. 8 still kept them close for a while with 2 more tough, contested 3 point shots. But we finally started closing out better and challenging 3 point shots, with Leong and Pin blocking a few, and were able to re-establish our lead.

FINAL SCORE : Ex-UM win 71-53.
Ex-UM is now 5-1.

Scoring disribution for this game:-

No. 4 Haw Keat - 0+0+1+0=1
No. 5 Ben - 2+2+0+0=4
No. 6 Bik Yih - 0+0+4+0=4
No. 7 Leong - 2+4+0+0=6
No.10 Pin - 4+5+0+1=10
No. 11 Chuan - 0+0+16+13=29
No. 12 Loke Yew - 0+3+0+4=7
No. 13 Ming Lip - 6+2+0+2=10

Well done guys. The starters covered for the bench this game. We hope the bench will come back strong next game. That's what team work is about ... everyone covering for everyone.

This was an especially important game for us as Friends had (before this game) the same 4-1 record as we had.

Tomorrow's game 7:00pm vs SST (our Kheng Sun is playing with that team).

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