The 2022 got underway tonight as the teams travelled to Casey to play the new NBL1 side, Casey Cavaliers.

Tigers Women

Excuse the briefness of this account as most it was missed due to dinner.

The Women’s team did not have a great night as Casey were too good for them everywhere and defeated the Tigers 94 to 44.

Casey had more shots and were more accurate in their shooting by hitting 39 out of 84 field goal shots compared to the Tigers 17 out of 63 with Casey having a 46.43% success rate compared to the Tigers total of 26.98%.

Casey were simply better everywhere though the Tigers put up stiffer resistance in the last quarter to stop Casey from scoring over 100 points.

While tonight didn’t go to plan, it is only the beginning of the 2022 season journey that will hopefully bring a complete season and things will get better this season, the team is young and they’ll learn and improve, it just takes time and patience.

Tigers Men

The Men were next on court with the task of stopping the Cavs from getting the clean sweep.

The two teams traded threes in the opening quarter and it looked like the Cavs were going to lead but Harrison Raynor had other ideas and scored a three with two seconds left to give the Tigers a one point lead.

Game coverage was interrupted around the time that the Tigers had taken a 20-17 lead, Jordon Timmons was busy in the opening minutes

Both teams were settling into going long range with the Tigers finding success through Taj Chehhal, Van Merbin and Livai Smith to give the Tigers a little breathing room before the Cavs came back.

Simon Bradbury scored the Tigers last four points to help the Tigers stay a point ahead of the Cavs at Half Time.

The Tigers missed four straight before getting a two-pointer and then a three-pointer to get the lead out to three but the efforts were matched by the Cavs.

After a lack of fouls in the first half, the Cavs filled up their five in the third but they seized the lead when the Tigers left a Cavs player open to score a three.

The Tigers gave away fouls in the last ninety seconds to fill up their five and it looked like the Cavs might lead going into 3QT but Livai Smith had other ideas with the help of Simon Bradbury to maintain the one point lead.

A quirky stat is that the Tigers and Cavs scored 23 points each in both the second and third quarters.

The Tigers radar was off in the early going and the Cavs missed an open three, they were punished with a Tigers three pointer only for the Cavs to equalize and then go ahead with a three of their own and soon it was a six point Cavs lead with another three as the Cavs found space.

The margin got out to eight before the Tigers countered with Felix von Hofe providing four points to halve the margin but the Tigers gave up two points and had a series of misses so things were looking grim with four minutes to go.

Felix von Hofe, Dogukan Elyazar and Simon Bradbury all scored to cut the margin down to two and Dogukan Elyazar missed an opportunity to tie it up and the Cavs got it out to four.

The Tigers had opportunities but the ball didn’t go in when needed and the Cavs won 84 to 79.

The difference was that the Cavs went to the free throw line more than the Tigers and had six more points than the Tigers there, The Tigers had one extra three pointer, the Cavs had one more two pointer which makes it the five point margin.

Conclusion

One thing that has to happen in NBL1 South broadcasts is please NBL1 find some impartial commentators, it gets really annoying hearing commentators drool over one team no matter if it is home or away, this has been a problem since the SEABL days.

The Women will improve and hopefully the Men will not drop off in the last quarter like they had done tonight.

Go Tigers!