Basketball Report

Week 1 – Saturday 14 October 2023

The First V went into their opening fixture prepared for a difficult task against a Scots team who were unbeaten in the pre-season Raschke Cup. Despite their opponents’ pedigree, the opening of the game was a tight affair, with Shore leading by 1 midway through the first quarter thanks to a superb defensive effort and some good scoring on fast breaks. While Shore stayed in the fight, the rest of the first half saw Scots’ tough rebounding open a 13 point lead at half-time. The second half saw the gap remain largely unchanged, with tough interior defence and profligate perimeter shooting making scoring difficult for both teams. This pattern was to continue through the end of the game, where a late Shore rally left a final result of Scots 68 – Shore 56. Captain Julian Reynolds led all scorers with 23, while Ben Murray had an impressive 20 rebounds.

The Second V was also facing a strong Scots side and found themselves in an 8-point hole early before a hot run of scoring just before quarter time put them back in touching distance at 14-16. The game remained an arm-wrestle through the second and third quarters, with both teams going on impressive scoring runs at times but unable to consistently prevent their opponents from doing the same. The game entered its closing stages with Scots holding a one point lead, but the men of Shore held their nerve and came up with some big defensive stops to decisively win the last five minutes, coming away with a 64-58 win. Ben Barry had a massive offensive game with 26 points, while guards Rex Cambridge and Toby Ashton did a great job of breaking Scots’ press to get the ball up the court.

To restart last Term’s never lost at Shore race, we have four coaches in their first season of basketball this Term – Mr Nield (6ths) and Mr Rajabzadeh (14G) from the ICT department unfortunately did not win their first games, but congratulations to Mr du Plooy (15D) and Mr Chapman (16B) for getting off to winning starts and thus becoming the winningest coaches at Shore for now. There were lots of other performances of note: at 7-1, the 15s were our most successful age group, while Vaughan Finlay’s 23 points for the 8ths and Tom Houstone’s 19 for the 6ths represent impressive totals for running clock games.

Player of the Week: Shared between splash brothers Eric Qiao and Tom Fiori, who combined for 6 threes (including 5 on consecutive possessions)  to ease the 5ths to a 49-27 win.

Team of the Week: Even though we had lots of big winners, I’m giving this to our 14Hs, who were denied a deserved draw by a very suspect foot-over-the-line call on a last-second free throw.

Mr G Davis
MIC Basketball

	Opens	16s	15s	14s
Week 1 Record	9-1-5	6-2	7-1	0-8
Overall Record	9-1-5	6-2	7-1	0-8