Pistons Dominate, Go One Up
Tagged in: Competitions, NBL
And now we have a series.
The Waikato Pistons took a 1-0 series lead with a dominating 95-78 win over the Century City Wellington Saints in game one of the 2008 Dominion Finance NBL Finals in Te Awamutu on Tuesday night.
American guard pairing Jason Crowe and Brian Wethers combined for 50 points but it was the 38 points from forwards Pero Cameron, Ben Hill and Mike Homik down low that moved the Pistons within a game of the championship.
Crowe scored 19 of his 26 points in the first half and added nine assists, while Wethers, Cameron and Hill took over in the second half, especially in the fourth quarter, boosting their two-point halftime lead to 16 points after three and cruised home in the final period to stun the regular season champs.
The series moves to the TSB Bank Arena, where the Saints have gone 10-0 this season, for game two on Friday night.
Wethers finished with 24 points and six rebounds, while Cameron had 15 points and seven boards, Hill 13 points and Homik 10 points as Waikato shot 54 percent from the field and 39 percent on three-point attempts.
“We felt we had power players,” Pistons coach Murray McMahon said. “They’ve got height but we’ve got power and we went to that.
“It was a combination of things. When we really started to come back into the game it was our defence and our defensive rebounding. The key thing was the defence . . . but it’s just one game, it’s only part-way.”
Waikato locked down on the Saints – the highest scoring team in the regular season – in the third period, holding Wellington to nine points and out-scoring them by 14 points.
Wellington did not get closer than 11 points in the fourth quarter as first Cameron, then Hill, went to work posting up in the low block, hitting clutch turnaround jumpers over Saints bigs Nick Horvath and Kevin Owens to kill any potential rallies.
Horvath scored a game-high 37 points on 15-of-23 shooting and 11 rebounds but too often was a lone threat – Lindsay Tait the only other double-digit scorer with 13 – as Wellington shot 42 percent from the floor and 28 percent beyond the arc.
“The first half we didn’t contain him at all and I thought in the second half we contained him well and he just hit a few threes at the end to get his points.”
Both Owens and Saints leading scorer Ernest Scott limped off with ankle injuries, Scott missing much of the second half and finishing with a season-low three points, while Tall Black Brendon Polyblank was held to four points in his 100th NBL game.
The Pistons used an 11-0 run to take a 17-point lead with 2:40 left in the third quarter.
Cameron took advantage of mis-matches in the low block, posting up Scott, and controlling the game as the Pistons held a 16-point lead after three quarters
Horvath and Crowe dominated the first half, Horvath with 21 points on 10-of-13 shooting at the half and Crowe with 19 points on 7-of-9 shooting.
The Pistons led by as many as seven points in the second but behind the play of Horvath and timely baskets from Martin and Tait, Wellington pulled back to take their first and only lead of the half at 50-49 after a Horvath three-point play with 1:30 remaining.
The Pistons, behind hot shooting, never trailed in the first quarter as they scored the game’s first five points and took a six-point lead into the first break. Waikato had a 12-6 lead up after four minutes with Crowe hitting back-to-back triples.
Crowe hit three treys to have 14 points in the first quarter, with the teams combining for eight threes in the opening period.
Game two in the best-of-three NBL Finals is Friday night at the TSB Bank Arena in Wellington, with game three, if necessary, on Sunday night.
Dominion Finance NBL Finals
Game One
At Te Awamutu Events Centre, Te Awamutu
Waikato Pistons 95 (Jason Crowe 26, Brian Wethers 24, Pero Cameron 15, Ben Hill 13, Mike Homik 10) Century City Wellington Saints 78 (Nick Horvath 37, Lindsay Tait 13)
1Q: 32-26
HT: 52-50 (20-24)
3Q: 75-59 (23-9)
FT: 95-78 (20-19)
Pistons vs Saints - Game One Box Score (21KB html)
