The Perth Wildcats defeated the Gold Coast Blaze 85-70 last night at "the jungle" in Perth. The Wildcats man handled the blaze to cruise to a 15 point win. The first half saw both teams playing some good basketball but leading into half time the Wildcats took the lead 55-42 with 5 three pointers in 3 min. Jesse Wagstaff had another impressive game draining the 3 pointer on consecutive shots with 15 points 5 rebounds and 4 assists. Kevin lisch also played well although Gold Coast did all they could to slow his impact on the game finishing with 12 points and 7 assists and was a decent defensice effort to keep him to a lower number with his high scoring ability. But when the Wildcats have so many offensive threats its a tough team to beat, especially at there home court. They finished with 5 players in double figures and Gold Coast were lacking for players to step up. Luke Neville was a force on the inside the giant that he is had 14 points 6 rebounds and two decent alley oops. Damian Martin was fouled out it the second half with 11 points and 5 assists.
Anthony Petrie had a very good game and was a work horse on both ends of the court finishing with 20 points and 8 rebounds. For a large majority of the game he was there top point scorer while he and Deleon tried to keep the Wildcats still within reach.
Gold Coast just werent hitting a lot of there shots and giving away to many second chance points on the boards. Deleon tried to take the game into his hands in the second half as they fell to a 19 point deficit but wasnt enough with his 23 points 5 rebounds and 3 assists. Mark Worthington, Chris Goulding and Adam Gibson just looked nervous missing some open looks. What happened to the Goulding of last week he couldn't miss in that first quarter against New Zeland.
The second half the Blaze were just managing to stay within reach of the Wildcats but never threatening to come back. Adam Gibson played limited minutes with a slight calf tear and you could see the blaze needed him at his best. Cadee was getting man handled when Deleon got a chance for a rest. After Martin came out with 5 fouls the Blaze made a small run at it but were slowed down with some impressive three point shooting from Lish and Wagstaff. From there it was just a slow down to the finish half way through the last quarter. Perth played smart and held onto there lead. Wildcats Coach Rob Beveridge was happy with how his team performed."We had been tested throughout the year and once you experience being up by 20 and losing a game, you learn from it. We've had our ups and downs, we know that, but we are becoming a very consistent team now and for us to put four quarters together like that was pretty good."
It was a very intense and physical game. Im surprised there weren't more injuries with the amount of contact the Wildcats were getting away with. Adris Deleon came off with an injury to the head colliding with Cam Tovey and big man Will Hudson hit the floor hard after taking a hit and a rebound and looked to have injured his hand/arm. Hopefully it wasn't serious and will still play later this week. Stephen hoar also looked to have injured his hand in a rebound contest. All might I add without a whistle being blown. "I thought in the first quarter we came out and for most of that quarter we were stable, but we had way too many breakdowns defensively which caused too many open shots," he said.
"We play with a little more confidence when our crowd's behind us and they probably play with a little less when their crowd isn’t behind them.
"That's probably the difference. When you look at the team stats throughout the year we almost mirror Perth so that crowd is a difference."
Mark Worthington will really need to step up to lead his team if they hope to win a championship. Adam Gibson will still be hampered from an injury for game 2 but looks like it should be another physical great game.
Perth Wildcats 85 (Wagstaff 16, Nevill 14, Lisch 12, Redhage 12, Martin 11)
Gold Coast Blaze 70 (Deleon 23, Petrie 20)
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