It's all Greek to me... Men Round 3 recap
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The Good
Townsville: The Heat put the exclamation point to their season so far by defeating last year's grand finalists Brisbane 101-77. Despite having 25 turnovers in the game, Townsville were dominating in their scoring efficiency (21/42 from the three compared to Brisbane’s 8/42). Djeric top scored with 22 points and Harry Froling was impressive with 20 points on 4/6 three point shooting. Townsville showed with their defense they have improved, they have depth and have players that can contribute on offence, Heat are certainly in contention for a championship. Brisbane struggle overall with only Ryan Jeffries contributing with 28 points. Their bench was woeful with key players Anthony Kopikcas and Drew Phillips combining for 0 for 15 shooting. Dusty Rychart at his first game back from the States, was disappointing with 9 points on 4/12 shooting.
SC Rip: Managed to get their first ever win in just their third game over SW Metro Pirates (i will get back to them later in the article). Lance Hurdle made his return from a hip injury to lead the team 31 points. Rory Sutton continues his impressive start to the season with another double-double. There are some talented there and when Scott Kenny is allowed to return from suspension and Jack Ocwieja arrives from college they should have a solid squad, frankly there is too much puss around this league for the Rip not to get another 3-4 wins this season.
The Bad
Rockhampton: They started the weekend on the right foot by beating Toowoomba but got spanked in the all important game against the defending champions Mackay. While i don't think Rockhampton would have won that game, i expect it to be a much closer game than the 18 points. You have to give credit to Mackay to limiting a high power offence to just 89 points for the game. Four of the five players did fire up, the expectation being Mitch Philip at 1 for 8 from the field for 7 points. My problem is the 18 point and how much that will bite them in the backside come playoff time, possibly determine a home grand final, semi final or even a playoff spot.
Toowoomba: The honeymoon that was the 2015 season is over and the Mountaineers are back to reality with 4 losses to the season. They lost to Rockhampton and Gladstone in the Central Queensland roadtrip. Chris Whitehead has been ranking up the numbers so far this season, but the one thing is he is no Jeremy Kendle. Cameron Weber has struggled so far this season, and Maxey while still producing good numbers, don't have the same punch like last years. Aaron Howard had a decent game at Rockhampton and they are expecting to announce an Aussie centre today. Gold Coast on the weekend
The Ugly
Ipswich: We all knew Ipswich were bad defensively but 129 points!!! Not to take anything away from Logan who were amazing (57.5% from the FG, 47.1% from the three) on the court, but it was an atrocious performance by the Force. I felt sorry for coach Mick Conlon. James Legan 2/10 from the field, wowsers! To be fair there were some positives with Kyle Harvey per usual and Adok Makwai having a breakout game with 21 points off the bench and Jaryd Eustace having a good all round performance. The bye should be a relief for the Force and they are getting reinforcement with Jason Ralph returning for week 5, but there are a lot of kinks that need to be worked out if Ipswich can return to the playoffs
SW Metro: You see the outcome of the boxscore and all you want to do is throw so many explicits like it's a Jerry Springer show! YOU LOST TO THE BLEEPING RIP!!! A team that only at its third ever game. Yes you are missing Tanner McCraw and Jason Conrad was playing his first game (12 points on 2/13 shooting and 7 rebounds) but Pirates you have to take part of the blame. You employ a strategy of getting NCAA division 2 players and i don't mind it cos there have some great talent out of it, but you can't keep using it this excuse of having missing imports year in and year out. You know when the season start, it's not like BQ give the teams two weeks notice when the season starts. There is ample time to organise imports and its a relative short season, you can't expect to have 2-3 loses than all of a sudden expect a team (that relies on imports a lot) to click in harmony from the get go. Its the pool of puss, you’re not out of it by any stretch of the imagination but at the same time you don't want to lose to team like Rip and expect to go the playoffs!EndFragment
