LAST WEEK'S WRAP UP
Aaron Anderson. While Aaron
was hopeful of being able to
play the medical advice that we
were receiving suggested oth-
erwise. Sadly for us the medi-
cal opinion proved to be correct
with Aaron warming up and
playing a few minutes against
Mackay before it became ob-
vious that to continue playing
would put him at serious risk of
missing weeks instead of just
days. Still we remained quietly
confident that we could pull off
a shock winning double.
The Mackay game was a high
quality contest worthy of a the
clash between arguably the two
best teams in the competition
and played in front of a near sell
out crowd in their huge new are-
na. Mackay got an early jump
on the Caps before the visitors
settled into a good rhythm and
started to score freely and even-
tually take a 3 point lead at the
first break 31-28. The second
quarter saw the Caps gradual-
ly take control of the game with
Princeton Onwas, Jake Davis
and Anthony Kopcikas all play-
ing well and leading the Caps to
a 14 point halftime lead 60-46.
The Caps penetration and pitch
game which was causing major
headaches for the home team
and was allowing the visitors
many high percentage shot op-
tions. The Caps finished the half
with 17 assists and shot 15 of
26 threes at 58%.
The second half saw the
Caps further extend their lead
to 21 points 69-48 before the
Meteors really knuckled down
like all champion teams and
started to play strongly at both
ends of the court and outscor-
ing the Caps 29-12 to end the
quarter trailing by just 4 points
81-77. The last quarter was a
gripping and even affair with
Mackay reducing the margin
to just 2 points before the vis-
itors steadi ed down the stretch
to record an outstanding 108-
100 victory. Princeton Onwas
was simply amazing scoring 27
points and was well supported
by Jake Davis 23 points from
7 of 8 shooting, Dusty Rychart
20 points and 13 rebounds and
Anthony Kopcikas 14 points.
For the home team Shaun
Bruce was outstanding with 30
points and 12 assists and was
well supported by Lucas Walker
27 points and 18 rebounds and
Chris Cedar 20 points.
We travelled to Rocky the next
day hoping to consolidate top
spot on the ladder with anoth-
er strong performance. Without
Aaron Anderson this was always
possible but never going to be
easy and we needed to get ev-
erything right in our preparation
to help overcome our fatigue
against a desperate home team
needing to win to stay in the
finals race. Unfortunately our
preparation was badly disrupt-
ed when the scoreboard mal-
functioned during the women’s
game forcing that game to be
moved to an outside court and
the men’s game being delayed
for 45 minutes while a tempo-
rary scoreboard and 24 sec-
ond shot clock was set up on
the main arena. Sitting around
twiddling our thumbs when al-
ready tired was not the sort of
preparation that was needed
and we consequently started
the match poorly and struggled
to play anywhere near our best
basketball. In spite of this we
led 21-19 at the first break, 47-
44 at the main break and were
tied 67 apiece at the last break.
Our poor basketball combined
with tiredness saw us make
many poor offensive and defen-
THE WRAP 2017 Official Game Program
sive decisions in the last quar-
ter and the home team took full
control to run out convincing
93-82 winners. The result was
massively disappointing after
the euphoria of the previous
nights heroics and it was diffi-
cult to find a good performance
outside of Dusty Rychart who
finished with 23 points and 12
rebounds to cap off an out-
standing weekend for the age-
less veteran who just seems to
get better with age. While ev-
erybody toiled hard and nobody
gave up we just simply played
well below our best and every-
body including the coach needs
to do better in our remaining
games.
Once the dust settled on the
weekend and the disappoint-
ment faded we realised just
how amazing our performance
was playing without our leading
scorer and top defensive stop-
per in star import Aaron Ander-
son. It is doubtful that any team
in the league could have per-
formed as well as we did with-
out their number one player.
Our young players worked their
butts off and our senior players
were amazing and it would have
been easy to just say this is too
hard with no Aaron but not this
group who just don’t know how
to give up.
We have three home games
remaining to finish the season
and if we win all three we fin-
ish on top of the ladder and
give ourselves the chance to
host the grand final again but
we need the support of all of
our loyal fans to help get this
amazing team over the line.
We host our cross town rivals
the Brisbane Spartans on Sat-
urday evening at 8.00 pm and
we hope to see the stadium full
of our supporters to cheer the
boys on to victory.
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