Sunday was a special day for the Melbourne Tigers, the club celebrated thirty years since the Tigers defeated the Perth Wildcats in NBL competition.

The team were up against the Mt. Gambier Pioneers, a formidable team whose sides were towards the pointy end of the ladder.

Victory by the Tigers would be the icing on the celebratory cake.

Women

The Tigers came into this round facing a team that started the weekend in third spot and the Pioneers started the game in fine fashion by establishing a five-point lead at the end of the period.

The scoring was even in the second period with the two sides scoring 21 points apiece and the Pioneers held on to their five-point lead at the main break.

The Tigers got going in the third period and outscored the Pioneers by five points to level up the game and set up a thrilling conclusion.

The Pioneers got the margin out to four in the first minute before Lily Carmody halved it before scoring again to even things up.

The Tigers then hit the front but a Pioneers three swung the game in their favor, Nikki Metcalfe then scored two and then sunk two free throws to put the Tigers ahead with just over four and a half minutes to go.

Nikki Metcalfe then sunk one of her two free throw attempts to extend the Tigers lead to four before a Pioneers three brough the margin down to one with three minutes and one second remaining.

A scare for the Tigers occurred when the Pioneers scored a three with just over two-minutes remaining, but there was drama as the shot clock expired just as the ball was being shot and the Tigers retained their one-point lead.

A minute later the Pioneers were again looking to score, once again the shot clock expired before they could do so and seconds later Lily Carmody scored from a free throw attempt to extend the margin to two points.

The Pioneers could not score in the last minute and the Tigers held on to win 67-65 to kick off the thirtieth-year celebration in fine style.

Samantha Simons top scored with 26 points to continue her fine season with the Tigers.

Men

The Tigers Men were next on court against the then ladder leading Pioneers who had narrowly lost to Geelong the previous night upsetting their 6-0 start to the season.

The Tigers had a hot start and led 28-18 at the end of the first period, the Pioneers got going in the second period but the Tigers extended their lead by one to lead 53-42.

The Tigers started the second half in style by scoring 28 points and with the Pioneers only getting 14, the lead was out to 25 points and Tigers fans were a period away from celebrating the perfect day.

Tigers fans weren’t completely comfortable as Nunawading came back from a big deficit to scare the team, Pioneers efforts were stifled in the last two minutes as Jordon Timmins put in two and Taj Chehhal put in five points including one with three seconds left to leave the margin at 24 points.

The Tigers Men have now squared the ledger and remain fairly close to the new leaders Frankston who have a 6-2 record so far this season.

Next up is the Eltham Wildcats and they are twelfth in the Womens competition and second in the Mens competition, both can be won if the Tigers play to their absolute best.

The Tigers travelled to Tasmania last week with the Men playing against the Hobart Chargers and NW Tasmania Thunder while the Women played the Hobart Chargers and Launceston Tornadoes.

Men

The Hobart Chargers came out firing and had a 25-13 lead at the end of the first period, things only slightly improved when the Chargers outscored the Tigers 24-18 to lead 49-31 at the half time break.

The game was more evenly matched in the third period with the Chargers extending their lead by only one point to take a nineteen-point lead into the last period.

The Tigers got into gear in the last period and outscored the Chargers by eight, but it wasn’t enough as the Chargers went on to win 82-71.

Only 19.05% of three-point attempts landed but they had much better success with two-point attempts with 48.65% going in.

Michael Wearne led the Tigers scorers with nineteen points with Callan McDonald having fourteen rebounds.

Tigers vs. Thunder

The next night saw the Tigers play the NW Tasmania Thunder and the Tigers had the opposite of starts this night by leading 25-11 at the end of the first period.

The scoring was closer in the second with the Tigers outscoring the Thunder by one to lead 42-27 at the half.

The Tigers increased their lead by two in the third but the Thunder outscored the Tigers 17-15 in the last but it wasn’t enough as the Tigers flew home with the 84-69 win.

Three-point shooting was the big different with 38.24% going in for the Tigers compared to 13.04% for the Thunder.

Jack Purchase topped the scoring with 28 points and Callan McDonald had 11 rebounds.

Women


It was a tale of two halves for the women against the Chargers, the first period they were ahead by one with the score 16-15, the were still ahead by one after scoring 17 points apiece leaving the score 33-32.

The wheels fell off for the Tigers in the third as the Chargers scored in 83.33% of their two-point attempts compared to the Tigers 0% and scored 24 points to 6 to comfortably lead the game.

The Chargers poured in another 26 points in the last period compared to the Tigers 12 to win the game 82 to 51.

Tigers vs. Tornadoes

The Tornadoes got out to a two-point lead at the end of the first period before outscoring the Tigers by six in the second period to end the half with an eight-point lead with the scores 49-41.

The Tigers fought back in the third period by outscoring the Tornadoes by four to halve the margin and setting up a thrilling conclusion.

Unfortunately, the game did not go the Tigers way as the Tornadoes won by extending their lead by two thanks to Keely Froling scoring 38 of the Tornadoes points in the game to win by six points.

Lily Carmody topped the scoring for the Tigers with 22 points and Angelique Francis scored from all four of her two-point attempts and had seven rebounds just one behind Lily Carmody.

Next Up

It is celebration time this Sunday as the Tigers celebrate thirty-years since winning their first NBL Championship.

The opposition is the Mt. Gambier Pioneers who are currently leading the Men’s competition and third in the Women’s competition so the Tigers best will be needed, they can get it done as they have the skills, everything just has to fall into place.

The Melbourne Tigers last Saturday night went to Dandenong to take on the Rangers, the two teams have played some great games against each other and last Saturday was no exception.

Women

The Tigers Women were in great form but were missing Jade Melbourne and were hit by the news that Monique Conti was not going to play with the Tigers this year.

Regardless of these events the women led at the end of the first period 22-20 then lead at half time 36-33 before leading at the end of the third period 57-52.

The wheels fell off for the women in the last period as the Rangers scored 28 points to the Tigers 15 to win 80-72, two-point shooting in the last was the big difference as the Rangers scored in 63.64% of attempts whilst the Tigers scored in 15.38% of attempts.

Samantha Simons led the scoring with 27 points and Angelique Francis grabbed ten rebounds for the team.

Men

The Tigers Men got their first win of the season earlier in the week against Nunawading and were looking to make it two in a row against the Rangers.

The Tigers led at the end of the first period 24-21 and had a superb second period to lead 49-38 at half time, the Rangers made slight inroads on the Tigers in the third period but still trailed the Tigers 68-59.

The Tigers scoring picked up as they outscored the Rangers 27-23 to record a comfortable 95-82 win.

Taj Chehhal and Jack Purchase shared the scoring honours with 22 points each with Callan McDonald picking up 11 rebounds.

Conclusion

The Men are starting to get it together and they now have two wins in a row with the Hobart Chargers and NW Tasmania Thunder coming up.

The Women are doing well this year, the fade out against Dandenong was not great but these things do happen, they’ll improve on things, it will be interesting to see how they go in Tasmania as they’ve got the Hobart Chargers and Launceston Tornadoes.

August 22 2022

So the NBL1 season is over, and it was not a season to remember for the Melbourne Tigers.

The Men had bad luck, a couple of shots didn’t go through the hoop and the opposition stole games away from them by getting a late run in, the season could have easily ended with the win total in double figures instead of having just five wins.

The Women were up against it from the start as they were a mostly young team and the more experienced Tigers were College bound so their participation was limited but the only way to gain experience is by playing and by the time 2023 comes around, they are going be improved players.

One thing that has to be fixed is the players being spread between BigV and NBL1, the spread while it helps with development also flattens the players and if there is a player crunch, players may not bounce back on Sunday afternoon after playing games on Saturday night.

Next year will see the Tigers get away from the bottom of the table so don’t lose faith in the club, it sounds like they got a plan in motion for everything to improve.

June 30 2022

Being a Melbourne Tigers fan can be stressful this year as the Tigers Men have been in several close battles this year.

Last night (yep Wednesday!) I was flicking through Facebook and there was news about the Womens team losing to Ringwood and thought it must be a delayed news report so I checked the NBL1 site and sure enough the Tigers were playing on a Wednesday!

So when I tuned in, the Tigers Men had the game against Ringwood well in hand halfway through the third and then the wheels just fell off and suddenly Ringwood were just two behind as Melbourne couldn’t get a shot to go in while Ringwood got them in up the other end of the court especially when they scored near the buzzer via a turnover.

The last term was an arm wrestle and the last minute was complete drama and I don’t know if NBL1 has terrible streaming quality but I couldn’t maintain a connection on the stream and it made things really tense.

So Melbourne were up by five with seconds to go when Ringwood got a late three to bring it back down to two points and so Melbourne used a timeout to start play up the court and chew up the clock to ice the game as they could still lose the game if a turnover resulted in a three or worse a 2 plus one opportunity.

Unfortunately they held on to the ball for too long as play commenced and the ball was turned over in controversial circumstances as it appears the whistle was blown a fraction early as the ball was being thrown in.

The stream got jammed and so I had to read the play by play to find out what on earth is going on over at Ringwood and it was a nervous couple of minutes as I knew Ringwood were in attack and could make a winning play.

Finally after a couple of minutes, the scoreboard updated and Ringwood were unable to score and the Tigers held on to win a close one 77 to 75.

The Tigers improve their season record to 3-9 and while that sounds bad, it is not a true reflection of the Mens abilities as they lost to Casey by 5, Sandringham by 5, Keilor by 4, NW Tasmania by 7 and Kilsyth by 4, a bit of luck the other way and the Tigers could have been 8-4 and be 7th on the ladder instead of 16th.

The Women are currently sixteenth too with a 2-10 record at the moment and it has not been a great season for the young side but they are still finding out who they are as a team and hopefully they can beat Dandenong and move up to ladder, the interesting part is that while they have scored less points than every team in the league, they are pretty good defensively as they are up among the league leaders when it comes to giving away measly totals.

As usual I look forward to the next round either by watching the stream or just follow the online scoreboard as one does when living in QLD.

Go Tigers!

It was another long game for the Tigers Women last weekend as they went down heavily against Eltham but this is a young team, pretty much everybody is under twenty-two years old and it will take time to reach an NBL1 standard but this happens in all sports, you build up a team and watch it go up the order and that’s what is going to happen.

It didn’t look good for the Tigers Men at quarter time on Sunday, the margin against them was in double figures but they caught up and with acts like Mason Gaze putting on great defensive efforts in the last quarter the Tigers overcame Eltham and put a win in the bank for the team.

This week the opposition is the Sabres and the Nunawading Spectres, it is always good to see the Tigers play another ex NBL team, it is also good to see them play the Frankston Bears and the Geelong Supercats too.

The Women’s team is ninth on the ladder and the Men’s team is third, so get on down to MSAC on Sunday by 12:30pm to cheer on the team and stay for the Men’s game that is on right after a short break.

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!