Undermanned Locos suffer defeat to Time Team

Date: 25/09/2023

Tough night at the office for the lads, comments from the coach below.

Arriving at the game early with a squad of 6 players, we knew we were in for a tough night. However, we did not let this dampen our spirits and with a spartan mentality, we prepared for the battle ahead. A strong warm up and team talk gave us organisation and with that, the game began. A big team for us to go up against physically but we competed with them in the air, under the basket and for every board. They had great shooters and were quick to close out our shots, causing us to struggle to keep up initially. Therefore, we got comfortable putting the ball down and adjusted by going right to the basket, putting them into foul trouble very early in the first quarter. We were 8/11 in free throw shooting but with Time team having the ability to sub 5 on and 5 off mid-way through, the fresh legs made the difference ending the quarter 11 – 24 them.

The second quarter we only got to the free throw line 3 times and turnovers went up. We played a 1-3-1 zone and managed to half their penetrations to the hoop significantly. Again, fatigue was an issue against a squad that could run subs frequently and keep their team fresh. This quarter saw us hit out first three of the game. The quarter ended, 13 – 17 them.

Scoring was very slow in the third quarter with more turnovers and a lack of fast breaks. We had 10 points in the quarter to their 20 but the adjustments we had made kept this from being a lot more as we forced a lot of turnovers from Time Team and disturbed a lot of threats that we struggled with earlier.

Finally, we pushed hard in the final quarter employing a full court trap and falling back into a 1-3-1. This worked great and allowed us to really turn up the offensive pressure capitalising on the fast breaks this created. The ball was swing hard by both teams and it was a fight up till the final whistle with both teams scoring 20+ points in the quarter alone. A great battle and a lot of respect from both teams. Final score 55 – 85 to them.