Canty suffers fifth defeat in seven rounds in senior men’s basketball

Press, 7 June 1983, Page 3

Canty suffers fifth defeat in seven rounds in senior men’s basketball

By

FRANK DUGGAN

The incongruous sight of John Hill hanging on to the basket ring after an unsuccessful dunk shot two seconds from the end told the tale of another inept rerformance by the 3ZM I Canterbury senior men’s basketball team at Cowles stadium yesterday afternoon. Canterbury suffered its second defeat in three days and its fifth in seven rounds of the Countrywide national league championship. It now shares last place with Porirua and Nelson. On Saturday, Drake Personnel won by 19 points, and yesterday 2ZM Centrals (Wellington), who had previously shared fifth place with Canterbury,

had a 12-point winning margin at the end, 80-68.

Again it was a game of almost complete frustration for Canterbury. Very little went right, byt the Rams have only themselves to blame. The rash bf fouls was greater than before and, although the. defence was slightly better than Saturday, it was still not up to standard. Canterbury gave away 29 points from the foul line, the result of 32 fouls — 14 in the first half, and 18 in the second. Canterbury managed eight points from 14 foul chances. Occasionally Canterbury matched Centrals for rebounding, but its efforts were spasmodic and ’ the defence, on the whole,

lacked organisation. . Too often the forwards just stood and watched Central’s shots go by and failed to challenge under the boards. Central’s rebounding average was far greater than Canterbury, and the team scored 56 times, while missing only 26. Canterbury could manage only 30 successful shots from 75 attempts. Probably the highlight of the game was the confrontation between the opposing captains, Clyde Huntley (Canterbury) and Alfred Patterson (Centrals).

Patterson was named the player of the match, top scoring with 21 points for an average of 66 per cent. Huntley’s points tally was 22 (an average of 58 per

cent), but Patterson was better in defence, dragging down some excellent rebounds. The score was tied at sixall after five minutes, but that was the last time Canterbury went close to the lead. At one stage it trailed by 18 points — the half-time score was 39-30 to Centrals — but slowly Canterbury whittled away at Central’s lead in the second spell and with five minutes to go had closed the gap to 72-66. However, the earlier departure of Dave Usmar and John Rademakers because of fouls, left the bench slightly depleted and Centrals did not have any real worries.

Now that Canterbury’s four national league players

will not be available for the first five matches of the second round, the coach, Murray Mackay, faces some heartburning. But a depleted squad has risen to the occasion before and Mr Mackay sees no reason why it cannot repeat the effort in the coming weeks. The scorers were:

2ZB CENTRALS 80 (A. Patterson 21, N. Stephens 19, J. McDonough, D. Hrstich 14 each, D. Warner 6, G. Dempsey 4). 3ZB CANTERBURY 68 (C. Huntley 22, A. Bennett 12, D. Usmar 10, J. Hill 8,.8. Knops 6, C. Dobbs, J. Rademakers 4 each, B. Hall 2).

The referees were Messrs R. Milligan and B. McCormick.