Sorry for the delayed post due to a busy week and will be worse next week as my boss flies in for a visit. Anyway, first ABL match against the Brunei Barracudas at home and from earlier post, we all know Slingers won big 87 – 69. Both teams battled it out in the 1st half, and from the look of the wordings found on the compression arm sleeve of #36 Lim, I thought he was going to have to eat his words with the Slingers winning 20-13 in the first quarter.
But Barracudas' import players of #13 Michael Pilgrim and #45 Lonnie Jones were strong finding their touch in the 2nd quarter chasing back to almost even the scores at 38-37 . The turning point was the 3rd quarter where Barracudas had more turnovers from the heightened defense of the Slingers whom capitalised to convert 50% of their field goals. However, do note that we only shot 20% FT in the 3rd and overall only 38%, which is rather painful to watch. The boys really need to go work on their FTs especially Weijian, Wei Long and Marcus. The reason being they drive to the hole often and is expected to be fouled. Games can be lost from FTs either by close games or demoralising the team overall.
The Slingers played well with the locals pulling quite a fair share of the weight scoring 38 of the total game points ~44% of the total score. This is a point Slingers
need to note - There is no pure shooter in the team
this season. Previous seasons you have Darren "Doc" Ng who is known to pull over 20 points a game with a consistent .3-.5 3PFG. Michael Helms who is the go-to guy for shots or drive to the rims. Right now, we have a more even squad, but clearly we have no star player who can score at will or even a 3-point specialist who can draw the defense out to the 3-point line. Wei Long did that tonight and someone really needs to keep doing it. The Barracudas may have lost tonight, but that's because they did not have the training or warm up games that our boys have. They have since trashed KL Dragons away at MABA Stadium in Kuala Lumpur
