Hills Hornets at Hills, April 30

Touch and go: Addam's first touch of the ball leads to a fast break goal.

















High flyer: James rises above Anthony to take a rebound.





















Unlucky: Kurt is slapped on the arm as he goes up for a shot. No call was made.










Loss 54-41
MVP James Trimble

Our first and fourth quarters hurt us in this game. We came out slowly, going to the first break 9-3 behind. In the second quarter and most of the third we outscored Hills to take a two point lead but then forgot our defence in the final few minutes of that period and drifted back to a 39-31 deficit at 3/4 time. After that the game just fell away from us.
Despite the loss to a very quick Hills team, there were some promising signs from the boys this week.
The shooting percentage increased and our rebounds improved at both ends, although we were still behind in total rebounds against Hills.
However our turnover count is still a problem. We made 32 turnovers. Of these 23 were off bad passes. Addam Stone (2 from travel) and Jack Suva (1 uncalled blatant foul) picked up a couple of turnovers on their statistic sheet that were really bad calls by the ref. All three calls, both to the naked eye at the time and afterwards when viewed on video, were obviously incorrect.
Our transition offence still seems to be blind to the left hand side of the court. In the entire first half our left hand scorer Addam Stone had only two touches of the ball. He scored off one and had an assist to James Trimble from the other. In the second half the numbers went up and Addam picked up six more points and an assist.
Jackson Gogoll played with an enormous amount of passion, fighting for every ball and Anthony Rodriguez had a massive second half at both ends of the court, shooting, rebounding, assisting and picking up steals. Meanwhile Kurt Joyner had more steals than turnovers and showed much better ball protection than in the two prevous games. Aaron Caldwell was strong under the basket at both ends. He strikes well from the top of the key and it may be worth considering putting him in a shooting position more often as he often attracts fouls and is a strong player in the melee under the basket. Aaron's scoring opportunities were limited in this game primarily due to the number of turnovers that came from his passes.
Michael Northey improves with every game. His defence is excellent and he was very unfortunate not to score in this game, with balls running around the ring but just failing to drop.
Point guard Jackson Suva has been taking too few shots recently. Once again he had a high percentage but only attacked the ring twice. Jack is a strong player and needs to trust himself more.
Nathan McOrist was fairly quiet during this match, but his move from the sideline - using a head fake and sudden acceleration - that led to his only score was one of the plays of the game.
There are some promising signs in this game. If we can keep improving our rebounds and reduce the bad passes we could get our first win of the regular season.
With Ryde at Sutherland our next game - a team that has two towering players - our rebounding and boxing out needs to be at its best.
Scorers: A Stone, J Trimble (8), J Gogoll (7), A Rodriguez (6), K Joyner, J Suva (4), A Caldwell, N McOrist (2).

Statistics
4. Nathan McOrist
Shooting: Field Goals: 1 of 6. Percentage: 16%
Free throws: N/A
Rebounds: 1. Steals: 0. Assists: 0. Turnovers: 2. Blocks: 0.
Points: 2

5. Jackson Suva
Shooting: Field Goals: 1 of 1. Percentage: 100%
Free throws: 2 of 2. Percentage: 100%
Rebounds: 2. Steals: 2. Assists: 0. Turnovers: 3. Blocks: 0.
Points: 4

6. Michael Northey
Shooting: Field Goals: 0 of 5. Percentage: 0%
Free throws: N/A. Percentage: N/A
Rebounds: 2. Steals: 1. Assists: 1. Turnovers: 1. Blocks: 0.
Points: 0

7. Kurt Joyner
Shooting: Field Goals: 2 of 5. Percentage: 40%
Free throws: N/A. Percentage: N/A
Rebounds: 7. Steals: 4. Assists: 2. Turnovers: 3. Blocks: 1.
Points: 4

8. Aaron Caldwell
Shooting: Field Goals: 1 of 2. Percentage: 50%
Free throws: N/A. Percentage: N/A
Rebounds: 2. Steals: 5. Assists: 0. Turnovers: 6. Blocks: 0
Points: 2

9. Jackson Gogoll
Shooting: Field Goals: 3 of 9. Percentage: 33%
Free throws: 1 of 6. Percentage: 16%
Rebounds: 4. Steals: 6. Assists: 1. Turnovers: 5. Blocks: 0.
Points: 7

12. James Trimble
Shooting: Field Goals: 4 of 7. Percentage: 57%
Free throws: N/A. Percentage: N/A
Rebounds: 3. Steals: 0. Assists: 0. Turnovers: 3. Blocks: 0.
Points: 8

13. Addam Stone
Shooting: Field Goals: 3 of 6. Percentage: 50%
Free throws: 2 of 2. Percentage: 100%
Rebounds: 1. Steals: 0. Assists: 2. Turnovers: 3. Blocks: 0.
Points: 8

31. Anthony Rodriguez.
Shooting: Field Goals: 3 of 13. Percentage: 23%
Free throws: N/A. Percentage: N/A
Rebounds: 9. Steals: 2. Assists: 2. Turnovers: 3. Blocks: 0.
Points: 6


Team highs:
Scorers: A Stone, J Trimble (8)
Rebounds: A Rodriguez (9)
Steals: J Gogoll (6)
Assists: K Joyner, A Rodriguez, A Stone: (2)
Turnovers (lowest): M Northey (1)
Blocks: K Joyner: 1