Zachariassen: Canterbury Basketball's Only Hope

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30215, 21 August 1963, Page 13

Zachariassen: Canterbury Basketball's Only Hope

CANTERBURY’S last hope of gaining representation in the New Zealand men’s basketball team to play the visiting Taiwan team from Formosa in three test matches next month now appears to lie with the 1962 New Zealand Universities representative, R. Zachariassen. He is the only Canterbury player from the four which took part in the recent southern region trials to be chosen by the national

selector (Mr J. G. Hamlin, of Wellington) for the final trial at Wellington on August 31.

This state of affairs is somewhat distressing for, although Canterbury has not had a great deal of success so far this season with its representative teams, it has had to cope with more than a normal share of bad luck and can be expected to do infinitely better in its re-

maining matches. It has a number of top-class players who would perform well in any company and, although seventh on the national ranking ladder, it would not be surprising to see a number of them selected for the South Island team at the forthcoming New Zealand championships. Zachariassen is a player of undoubted ability and he has been a permanent member of the Canterbury team for several years. A quiet, unassuming and popular member of the University A team, he captained the representative side for the first time this season in the Canadian Goodwill Tournament. His positional play is without reproach, his defence is sound and he must be considered one of the finest exponents of the jump shot. This season, Zachariassen has played in all 10 Canterbury representative fixtures, scoring a total of 93 points. His highest representative score was 19 against Buller at the South Island championships. He also scored 110 points in inter-club basketball. Six members of the New Zealand team which made a South-east Asian tour last year have been chosen for the trials. They are C. Agnew, R. Mead (Hamilton), A. Bland, B. Bowden (Wellington), L. McLoughlin (Hutt Valley) and R. Wotherspoon (Hawkes Bay). All appear to have a better than even chance of again nepresenting New Zealand. Bowden and Bland, in particular, showed up very well at the southern region trials. On current form, only

three South Island players chosen for the final trial could be considered for a place in the New Zealand team. They are K. Baddiley. C Cotton (Nelson) and Zachariassen. Cotton was one of the outstanding players at the southern trials, scoring the greatest number of points of any player. Baddiley also scored freely and drove very hard down the centre court. It is strange that more players have not been chosen from the southern region in view of a statement made by Mr Hamlin at the southern region trials. He stated that the southern standard of play had been much higher than that set at the northern trials a week earlier. Since making that statement he has obviously had second thoughts, for he chose 12 players from each of the regional trials for the final trial. The South Island fared rather badly, gaining only six representatives, three from Nelson, two from Southland and one from Canterbury. Otago, which won the South Island championships comfortably this season, surprisingly has no representative in the trial at all. Even if the South Island does not gain representation in the New Zealand team to play Taiwan it will still have a chance of getting a player included in the New Zealand team to play in the second Asian championships at the end of the year. This will not be made final until after the national championships.