GOING FOR IT: SE Systems’ Adrian Sparks looks to the basket under pressure from 9ers’ Hoera Mohi in Gisborne club basketball. Tonight, Systems play East Coast and tomorrow, after the women’s games, 9ers play Old School.Picture by Paul Rickard
UNDERDOGS will have to dig deep tonight.
Gisborne Boys’ High School take on the Dragons at 5.30pm in Week 5 of Gisborne men’s club basketball.
At 6.30, Lytton High School — without regular captain Genesis Bartlett-Tamatea — play defending champions City Lights.
Campion — whose captain Patrick Murphy dislocated his left knee — play the Billy Maxwell-led Pure Sound at 7.30pm.
Hard-running East Coast play the ageless SE Systems at 8.30pm.
Game 5 of the 10-team men’s competition — the 9ers versus Old School — will be played at 8.30pm tomorrow night, after the women’s club games.
In that competition, Gisborne Girls’ High School play Paikea at 5.30pm, Campion play Lytton at 6.30pm, and Mackeys play reigning champions Ngati Porou at 7.30pm.
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BOYS’ High captain Joseph Te Maari says he just wants to lead his team to a win.
Te Maari knows that his crew will have to run the floor against big opposition whose most experienced member — and player-coach — will confine himself to the sideline tonight.
“We’re a young team, in terms of basketball age,” Dragons mentor Bronson Te Hau said.
“Our offence is improving, Keenan Ruru-Poharama’s making veteran plays every Monday, giving his teammates the best chance to score, and being vocal.”
Springheeled Te Maari might have to match up with towering Dragons centre Jasper Wills.
The Dragons beat the Coast 63-46 and sit atop the league — with City Lights and Old School — on nine points. Systems and Campion both have five points, Pure Sound have four, Boys’ High and East Coast have three, the 9ers have two and Lytton have one.
Teams receive three points for a win, two points for a draw (tied scores at the end of regulation time) and one point for participation.
Like Lytton, Boys’ High have had a two-week break from basketball but will need to get back into game mode from the tip.
Wills is the focal point of the Dragons offence.
Although Bronson Te Hau says his team are still getting used to the intricacies of changing defences, they still go into Game 1 as favourites.
Head coach Dwayne Tamatea’s Boys’ High team haven’t taken the floor at the YMCA since July 3 but the Dragons might consider that, the last time they did, they drew 43-all with Pure Sound and but for a halfway shot at the buzzer, they might now be tied with the “Pound” on the table.
Gisborne Basketball Association life member and former first-division referee Cliff Blumfield will officiate for the first time this year.
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SIXTEEN-year-old Genesis Bartlett-Tamatea is a guard in the under-15 boys’ New Zealand Basketball Academy team who began their Las Vegas campaign with a fifth-placing in the Jam On It tournament — the first of five premier youth tourneys in the US state of Nevada. The fifth of these will start on Wednesday.
In Bartlett-Tamatea’s absence, sharpshooter Louie Rangihuna will lead a Lytton outfit who have another talent in the back-court — Tane Wills-Aranga. These two will have to handle the ball, run Lytton’s offence and stay razor-sharp against City Lights, if they are to keep the scores low.
Lytton lost the season-opener to Campion College, 42-37, but that night Rangihuna hit jump shots. Seven days later, Wills-Aranga had a 13-point game against Old School.
City Lights have won four in a row. Last Monday’s 46-41 victory over Pure Sound proved that when the game is close, they come through on character.
City Lights captain Scott Muncaster says Lytton are a young team who will be “super-keen” to have a shot at the reigning champions.
But for City Lights, it will be no different from playing anyone else, he says.
“We’ll give ourselves a hard time and a bit of a wake-up if we slacken off.”
Muncaster sees the game as an opportunity for all of his personnel to touch the ball, and run.
Both he and strongman Ryan Walters are adept at finding their men on the fly. Carl Riini and Dom Wilson are two of the league’s best in the open court, and the infusion of new blood in Zade Donner serves as proof that the defending champions have an eye for talent.
Donner has great enthusiasm and that can spark a team, even a host of proven performers like City Lights.
Rangihuna is clear on what Lytton’s focus is this evening.
“I want teamwork and communication,” he said.
“City Lights are skilful — they can shoot the three-pointer, especially Scotty. We have to keep up with them, and we have to be strong.”
In a half-court situation, when Lytton are on defence, Rangihuna will need his team to call out — and react to — ball-movement, player movement and space.
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He’s a hard-working player, and they’re going to miss him.
Patrick Murphy led his team to a 64-59 win against Tauhara College of Taupo at the spiritual home of Hawke’s Bay basketball — Centennial Hall — at the Havelock North High School Invitational Tournament.
But it came at a cost. The gutsy captain was injured in the fourth quarter of Campion’s first game, and will be out for at least three weeks.
“We were placed fourth out of five teams,” Murphy said.
“I just want them to play now like we did over the weekend — with courage and tenacity.”
Murphy is confident that the Shane McClutchie-coached Campion have the ability to compete without him, and is looking to guard Orlando Pedraza, in particular.
In recent weeks, the likes of Tahran Ward, Tana Ward, Ollie Simpson and Konnor Gibson have all had their moments but Pedraza’s ball-handling ability is now even more important.
He doesn’t necessarily have to stump up with 17 points — as Murphy did against league leaders City Lights — but he does have to play with maturity, direct and run Campion’s offence, maintain communication and run non-stop. That’s a tall order.
Pure Sound captain Bill Maxwell is hoping his team can get a good lead so he can get their young guys out on the floor for a decent length of time.
His mission it is to bring through the next blue-and-gold generation.
“Play-wise, we want to get back to basics — make our easy baskets, take high-percentage shots, shoot free throws,” Maxwell said.
If Dale Hailey — who scored 11 points in the Pound/Boys’ High epic in Week 2 — is back on deck tonight, Campion will have to muscle up close to the basket. The mild-mannered Hailey has for 20 years spun and turned to the basket with hardly a grim look at any of his many overzealous opponents in the low-post. They’ve been lucky like that. Even now, he adds another dimension to Pure Sound’s game: an inside presence.
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Game 4 should be this evening’s toughest contest. SE Systems will have only five players tonight and they will compete harder for that.
Teams without substitutes, who then slacken off, are overrun.
Yet Old School proved in Week 3 with their heroic, come-from-behind 40-37 win against East Coast, that it is possible to achieve victory with a skeleton crew.
That said, it isn’t something that older teams ever choose to do. Systems will be without Thomas Kepa and Max Scott, both of whom excelled in Systems’ 77-35 win against the 9ers.
Tonight, it will be Adrian Sparks, Anton Riri, Dayley Riri, Adam Tapsell and Jackson Leach who line up against a Coast team who have yet to taste success. Coast had a bye (two points) in Week 2, and have one point for each of their losses to Old School and the Dragons. Systems also beat the Coast 43-35 on opening night, and so the big men of Systems are not without hope.
Systems captain Adrian Sparks says the Coast impressed him last week — they never stopped trying things.
Sparks will hope that fellow veteran Adam Tapsell can repeat his remarkable effort of last Monday — a 20-point haul — and he was only one of four Systems players to score in double-figures — Kepa (16pts), Sparks (12pts) and Scott (11pts) were the others.
East Coast captain Brandon Paul says his side are looking forward to this game, “even if it is fun watching these older guys try to play tricks” on them.
Sparks has played tricks on unsuspecting victims at national second-division level — namely, off the reserves’ bench with an assist late in the Rising Suns’ 1998 win against John Kahukiwa’s Hibiscus Coast here.
Paul’s own offensive game is in great shape. He scored 17 points last week, and teammate Sam Manuel is a talent who can finish difficult plays.
Ezra Paul, the captain’s elder brother, is a solid player. His fundamentals and reading of the game are sound, and his maturity is an asset. He often finds a man open near the basket with a quality pass, or gets to such space himself to score. He is a player SES would do well to watch.