Ex-UM @ JW Cup - Game 5 Stats (vs JK5)

Our final group match (to determine Group Champion / Runner-Up) was against the familiar JK5. This JK5 team had a few new players. A No.7 who is a good shooter and two very tall centers.

I was again overseas and not able to contribute to the team. Having watched the video and done the game stats, I thought our team played reasonably well on the offensive end. It was the defensive end that was the problem as we were unable to stop JK5 from scoring.

Click "Read more" for game details as well as full game stats.

JK5 got off to a great start, breaking out on a 9-0 run. However, we didn't lose the game because of the start as we promptly went on our own 9-0 run to tie the score at 9-9. JK5 continued to shoot the ball incredibly well (especially their No. 7) and their point guard No. 8 played extremely well. Even our usual speedster, defensive specialist, Jensen was not able to stay in front of No. 8 and he continually broke our defense down with dribble penetration and either amazing scooping lay-ups or good passes and assists.

Still our offense kept us close throughout until our team lost focus in the last 2 min 30 secs of the 2nd quarter. At that point we were still just down by 5 points (33-38). Suddenly, we let JK5 explode for a quarter ending 12-0 run!! During that sequence, Poh Guan, Ming Lip and Sem all had their shots blocked whilst Chuan, Ching and Sem had turnovers, resulting in 6 consecutive scoreless possessions for us whilst on each occasion (after blocked shot or turnover), JK5 ran out and scored on fast breaks. Suddenly at half-time, we were down 33-50!! That I felt was the turning point of the game.

For the rest of the 2nd half, whilst we continued to score reasonably well, we were unable to stop JK5 from scoring and were never able to catch up. Other than No. 7's shooting and No. 8's good point guarding, we were also unable to stop JK5 from scoring due to our poor defensive rebounding, allowing JK5 to get a commanding 44% of all available rebounds at our end of the floor. That's almost half!!

We will definitely have to do a better job on our defensive boards moving forward.

Still it was a good effort by our team. We are nonetheless Group Runner-Up and advance into the Quarter Finals to meet MTV Digital, which topped their group.

Ching as usual gets a double-double (21 pts, 16 rebs) but had an uncharacteristic team high 5 TO's. Sem continued to struggle with 1/11 FGM/A and only 1 rebound. Poh Guan too struggled with 1/11 FGM/A. Chuan and Jensen had double digit points (12 and 11 respectively) to contribute offensively. Ming played well off the bench whilst Ming Lip also contributed 5 points and 8 rebounds.

Below is the full game stats Box Score.

Ex-UM v JK5 (loss) Box Score