Trevor Jackson
IN a tightly-contested game, the Mount Gambier Pioneers men suffered their third loss of the NBL1 South season at the Icehouse on Saturday night.
The Pioneers went down to the Eltham Wildcats by just five points in a game that could have gone either way.
Mount Gambier fronted up to the Round 10 clash without the services of Michael Harris, who sat the game out on the bench.
The roller-coaster game saw both sides take their chances but the Pioneers were on the back foot from the start.
The Wildcats came to play and took the game right up to the hosts, off to a strong start before the Pioneers began to settle into their work.
It took the Pioneers some four minutes to bother the scorers, while the Wildcats had already put seven points on the board.
Try as they might, the home side could not claim the lead in the opening stanza and would have to wait until the third term to achieve that.
They closed to within a point in the second term but went to the long break down by four.
That all changed in the third quarter, as Tom Kubank drained back-to-back threes to claim the lead inside the first minute of play.
The Wildcats soon evened the ledger before another triple from Kubank had the Pioneers up again.
Tom Daly then added back-to-back baskets for a game-high seven-point advantage.
The arm wrestle continued, then mid-way through the term the Wildcats went on a 10-0 run for a 10-point lead.
The Pioneers trailed by nine points at the final break and had a big job ahead.
Fortunes fluctuated throughout the final stanza and the Pioneers had a chance to tie the game and send it to overtime as the clock would down.
However, it was the Wildcats who rejoiced at the final buzzer with a 100-95 victory.
Nick Marshall and Kubank both finished with 23 points, while Marshall also pulled down 11 rebounds.
Daly contributed 20 points, Jordan Rawls 11 and Erik Burdon 10.
Despite the loss the Pioneers still hold top spot on the ladder, just a few percentage points ahead of the Hobart Chargers.
Coach Richard Hill said the loss of Harris did hurt the team but the Wildcats proved a tough customer on the night.
“They were tough,” he said.
“They came out a little bit tougher than we did and we couldn’t make a basket early.
“They had a young guard who was pretty good and we couldn’t contain him.
“He is only 18 years old and a special player.”
When the Pioneers were up in the third term, Hill said the game appeared to be back on track but a few simple mistakes turned the tide again and Eltham responded.
Likewise in the final term the Pioneers made their run, coming from a nine-point deficit to close the margin but could not quite get it done.
“We shot the ball ridiculously well,” Hill said.
“When you shoot the ball from the three-point line at 45 per cent and don’t win, it is pretty rare.
“In that last quarter we scored 37 points but let them score 33.
“You are not going to win too many games if you are 10 down and give up 32 points in the last quarter.”
The Pioneers hit the road this weekend to face the Diamond Valley Eagles on Saturday night, followed by the Sandringham Sabres on Sunday.
While Diamond Valley sit down the ladder, the Sabres have worked their way up to third place and are a real threat to the travelling Pioneers.
Hill said the competition was now showing its true potential, as teams have settled with their NBL players in place.
“Everyone we play from here on in is a chance of beating us,” he said.
“That was the case earlier in the year but we were finding ways to win, some of those exceptional.
“Sandringham will be a tough game.
“I think they have lost one of their last 11 games and are probably the best team in the competition at the moment.
“They had three players play for New Zealand last week in the World Cup, plus a bunch of NBL guys, so we have to find a way to get it done.”
