Canadians in Australia: NBL Rounds 7 and 8
The Australian NBL has seen big contributions from Canadian players and officials in an eventful period of the early half of the 2022 season.
Round seven saw the Adeliade 36ers hosting coach Scott Morrison's Perth Wildcats, who came to Adeliade winners of three straight and were looking good to extend that streak. However they quickly found themselves on the back foot to the 36ers' three-point shooting. The home team built a big early lead behind six threes in the first quarter, which led to them leading by 28 in the second quarter, while the Wildcats were unable to come up with an answer and ended up trailing from start to finish.
Victor Law finished with a double-double, 16 points and 14 rebounds, for Perth in their thirteen-point loss, where Daniel Johnson led all with 21 for Adelaide in the win.
It was a busy point in the season for Xavier Mathan Rayes, who scored sixteen points for the Illawarra Hawks while also committing a lot of turnovers, some of which led to the Sydney Kings picking up plenty of points, mostly from the low post. It was a back-and-forth game which saw Sydney's early double-digit lead turn back over to the Hawks in the second half.
Days later he posted ten points, one of five to reach double digits for the Hawks, who had it all to do against Melbourne United. The visitors saw three double-doubles and a game high 33 points by Matthew Dellavedova, performances keeping them firmly in front. Despite being second to Melbourne in terms of firepower, Illawarra were able to match them on both ends of the floor, but in the end strength and ability prevailed against tactical play.
In the Hawks' first game of round eight, Rathan-Mayes was their top performer with seventeen points and eight total rebounds as they hosted league leaders Perth. Early success from Illawarra in the low post saw them build a double digit lead by the end of the first quarter.
Coach Morrison had plans to disrupt the Illawarra rhythm. After cutting down the deficit from the field, Perth's three-point shooting in the third saw them outscore the Hawks by fourteen. Capitalising in the final period, three Perth players reached the twenty-point mark as part of their big victory over the Hawks, 94-78.
Finally Rathan-Mayes had five points and a game-high seven assists against the Adelaide 36ers, against whom the Hawks' interior play gave them an early edge. The teams remained evenly matched until late in the third when Henry Froling took command of the Illawarra offence, powering them to a lead that reached as high as twenty-three. Adelaide's outside shooting brought down their deficit but was too little too late: led by a game-high 27 from Froling, the Hawks got back to winning ways after dispatching Adeliade 100-89.
Elsewhere MiKyle McIntosh has nine points for the Tasmania JackJumpers when they hosted South East Melbourne, two teams that were evenly matched on offence throughout the first half of their meeting. Yet in the third quarter Tasmania kept falling short and the Phoenix built a game-winning double-digit advantage over them.
At the end of a low scoring final period, nineteen points in total, South East Melbourne were the winners by thirteen, lifted by a top performance by Zhou Qi, who scored 18 and grabbed eight total boards in the win.
Coach James Duncan's Brisbane Bullets began round eight with a big victory against the Sydney Kings, overturning an eighteen-point deficit with an overpowering fourth quarter team performance. Their eleven-point win, led by 30 points by Nathan Sobey, was avenged two days later when the Kings blew out the Bullets 97-73 on their home court.
Round eight ended with an unpredictable back-and-forth game between the Bullets and Melbourne United. Success from the field at the start propelled Brisbane to an early double-digit lead, Melbourne responded from beyond the arc to go in front at half-time.
The Bullets regained their advantage in the third only for Melbourne to steal it back with an eight-point unanswered run. Going into the final stretch Lamar Patterson and Nathan Sobey led a late push which got Brisbane to within two points in the final minute, but with neither side making anoth bucket the final result stood. Patterson led all with 21 points but it was Melbourne United who ended the game with the all-important win.
These results leave Perth behind only Melborune United on the league ladder, with the Hawks in the playoff zone a space above the fifth-place Brisbane Bullets. The Tasmania JackJumpers are a place off bottom of the table, with one less loss than last-place New Zealand Breakers.
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