Hoops

Game Night: Sixers v Cairns

Did anyone see what the snake was holding up at the game?

Photo of Luke and Alf side by side "spot the difference"

No respect whatsoever.

I agree with Jonno in putting Maher in the starting PG position. The 36ers' undoing this year has come partly by Bruce and his inexperience. Bruce still needs the leadership of Maher and should not be given such a huge role in his first year. As it is so close to the end of the season, I would be risking Maher as a starter and I would risk it in the hope of seeing him out this season after a brilliant end. The way they are going now, Maher is not going to end his career on a memorable note.

yea, Hodge definatly helped, he didnt take us from last to 3rd like he said in his blog, but he did turn us around and get us winning or ver close to beating the top sides. I dont think anyone can bag out Hodges on court performance!
Anyway what are peoples thoughts on Grizzards first game, what are we expecting from him, i personally feel for us to stay in the top 4 mix he will need to give us 15-20 points, 5 rebounds a game and some solid defense and be able to play from SG-SF-PF.
My starting 5 for the rest of the season
PG Maher
SG Grizzard
SF Holmes
PF Ballinger
C Schenscher

I think Bruce has dropped off a little and should go off the bench for a bit or reduce his minutes a little, and if people think holmes has also dropped off a little i say give Brad Hill a start at SG and move Griz to the SF.
I think the 36ers have to build there core around and possibly put the most minutes into Bruce, Hill, Holmes, Ballinger, Schenscher if we can keep those 5 with Balls naturalising and add 2 good imports (before the Hodge saga went down i would have been hoping for a pairing of Hodge and Grizzard) thats going to keep us in the title mix for the next 5 or so years, especially given guys like Anstey are starting to get up their in age a little so the tigers reign probably doesnt have too much time left.

DoDaBonk I agree that consistency has not been proven yet and a championship this year is unlikely because of it. We could also rest on the theory that we have beaten some of the best teams and they are the ones that are going to stand in the way of a championship. I personally would not be satisfied with anything less than 4th place because we have to have a home playoff game. At home we can beat anyone, on the road we can beat the better teams (its the lower teams we can't get over). That will be the key.

#222094 you have quoted something that I have said so I assume that you think I had been on Hodge's bandwagon before all this drama occured........WRONG.
The people that sit around me know my attitude towards Hodge and one of them said to me that I must now be happy that all this has happened and Hodge is gone. He was right, you were not.

^^^ If a loss to a lower ranked team that is in administration and without imports is within reason by your standards, you need to apply for a job coaching the Blaze.

Really. Wanna go deep in the post season? HARDEN UP.

There is NO excuse. We are taller. We are deeper. We are VASTLY more talented. We have ore resources. We didn't have a freakin' cyclone this week. We have two more imports. Any excuse attempting to justify this loss is an utterly ill founded. NO exceptions.

We had our ass handed to us again because we took our foot off the throttle. As always. Mental discipline.

DoDaBonk, I specifically said he would have made a difference to this game only. I don't want Hodge on the team because I know he is not championship material and with the way he plays, he would never have led the team to a championship. I am just saying he may as well have had his way with the ball in this game because nothing much was happening from the rest of the team.

Luke sick. Paora injured. Didn't help.
Bruce foul trouble. Davo quiet.
Seems Cooper and Holmes do their job defensively.
Grizzard passed to Cooper too much.

Hood I disagree. Hodge would have made a difference in this particular game only because he would have got his 29 points at the expense of no one else on the team because no one else was doing anything worthwhile.

A numming feeling really.. I felt comfortable , at half time.. as we seemed to be getting a bit better as the game went on.
Perhaps the players did , also. Came out asleep for that 3rd qtr rubbish.
Maybe Ballinger, Maher and Hill were OK.
The rest well down on what I was expecting ,from them.

This is one game I wished Hodge had played. In the absence of anyone stepping up(including Ballinger) Hodge may as well have hogged the ball and played a lone game. No one else deserved it from him. I include Ballinger because his 18 points were below his standard and his 13 rebounds were wasted.

Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration, Frustration,

You are probably right Bizzy. Good thinking.

Must be the humidity. I can't think of anything else as to why they are playing so badly.

5points and 7-8 turnovers in 3rd qtr

They think there might be about 4000 there

Radio called Ninnis passing it to Holmes.

We seem a bit better with Grizzard on.....not quite sure about cooper.

Forget about the second leg and lets concentrate on getting tonights game. We may well lose Lukes effectiveness tomorrow night with the flu during the week and the conditions for tonights game will take a lot out of him so we must place the importance on getting the W tonight and than deal with tomorrow nights game when it comes.

36ers season review is up on the nbl site-nothing earth shattering

To be fair, he's pretty heavily injured. He's like a spandexed mummy these days. Must be frustrating for a player of his caliber / pride.

Darnell did look like a shadow of his former self when then played at the Dome last game.
Huge gap between that game and the previous game at the dome by all players.

Yeah I've noticed that too Loco. There was a horrible one a few games ago where Bruce got completely lost behind the high post screen and the offense drained a wide open jump shot. Bruce has improved a lot recently, but as a team it's still of concern. Winitana is very court aware so I think he's a good option for perimeter defence - he's always looking for the steal too which can help force some bad passes.

It's the high post screens that concern me. The pick and rolls / extra pass to the shooter on the 45' or baseline seem to kill us. We just don't get a hand (unless Mahersy is in uber-hustle mode).

Winitana has improved our effectiveness there, but previously, our rotation in that regard wasn't the best. Too many open looks from basic picks.

Is it just me, or do we have a lot of options for offense? Ballinger, Grizzard and Maher all have very good mid range jump shots. Maher, Ballinger, Davidson and to a lesser extent Bruce can all hit the 3 ball consistently. Luke provides inside scoring and there's also Grizzard and Hill to take the ball inside and try to draw the foul - Grizzard is a very good free throw shooter.

The only real concern I have is our defence. We gave up way too many open shots against Cairns and they knocked the shots down, in the first half anyway. Adelaide seems to have a 'collapse' defense for lack of a better word, where they can guard the lane effectively (most times) by falling back to the lane, but they are inconsistent in getting out to contest the open shot.

Hopefully the Sixers retain focus and hustle tonight. Too often they've come through when it's backs to the wall and then stumbled when the pressure is off slightly.

I'd like to see the front court use Cat's comments re: utilisation of our big men as fuel. Likewise, I'm sure Cairns is impressed Cat has announced he's headed west next year after four years with the Taipans (unsurprisingly).

Love to see the guys keep the intensity high and come home 2-0. As mentioned, I hope the Breakers took it out of the Crocs last night.

We have the depth to get both of these - let's keep the momentum we've generated.


Sixers by 15 over Cairns.
Sixers by 6 over Crocs.

Luke missed training , early in the week. Flu , I think they said. Will play, but one imagines that fri and sat games, with a bitta flu , on monday , maybe not quite at his best.