Townsville destroyed the Breakers

Townsville dis-assembled the New Zealand breakers tonight in game one of the 3 game series. The Townsville Crocodiles won a comfortable 99 to the breakers 82  Did the crocs throw them off with that given loss last week? that was not finals basketball from the breakers and they'll have to up the intensity next week. They have the skill but they were too confident with that.

Many people wrote off the Townsville Crocodiles going into this series and there victory has caused a big upset with New Zealands chances of winning back to back championships looking shaky. Only last week Shane Heal and Steve Carfino barely mentioned them in the playoff race but to beat the Breakers at home, says a lot.

Peter Crawford led the way for the Crocs with 26 points and the NBA veteran Eddie Gill tallied a tidy 21. Tom Abercrombie scored a team high of 21 for the Breakers.

Townsville played smart basketball limiting the impact key players like Cedric Jackson and CJ Bruton could make. They also rebounded well the Big Red, Luke Schencher had 9 points 6 rebounds and 6 assists and Jacob Holmes made 12 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists. It was a well rounded effort from the Crocs with several players filling the stat sheet with points, boards and assists.

Townsville coach Paul Woolpert said his team executed the game plan as well as possible.

“We talked about the obvious things, like limiting them to one shot. They’re a great offensive rebounding team," he said.

"We needed to stop their transition game and the best way to do that is execute well offensively. You make a great team like the Breakers take the ball out of the net instead of turning the ball over ... you don’t want to feed the monster.”

The New Zealand Breakers lead going into the first break 21-19. And the second quarter saw both teams come out firing with the lead trading places on multiple occasions. Elvin Mims (13 points) completed a 3 point play going into half time break with the crocs taking the lead 44-41. Gill and Schencher took the lead to double figures with a 3 from gill followed by a nice hook from Schencher. And back to back threes from Holmes and Crawford had the home side chasing a 20 point deficit that was too much for the home side to reign in.
“That’s just a confidence factor,” said Woolpert. “We played well the first time we were here [at Vector Arena] and we like shooting in this gym. That confidence carried over to tonight."

The Townsville Crocodiles defied there critics and are looking good to take down the shaky Breakers at there home gym "the Swamp" this week. Thats if they can put up another performance like they did on Friday. But the breakers can come back they are a strong team and must stay confident. Wilkinson was still unflinching for the breakers, “We’re a team that, when the challenge is presented, we’ve stepped up and got the job done,” he said.

“All of us know that and we understand what’s ahead of us.”

Game two of the series will be a good game. I dont see the Breakers lyeing down on the job this time. They'll have something to prove, the minor premiors wont want to go down this easily.

Post Script:
And how good did was the television production compared to ONE HD. The shooting of the game and whole media aspect of it was far better then any game i have seen all season. Thats the first New Zeland game i have seen but one hd need to take a look at see how its done.