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!

April 10 2022

We’re two weeks away from the 2022 NBL1 season and the Tigers have been playing practice games to get into the groove for the year.

The Men defeated Bendigo and Frankston and the Women just fell short in their game against Frankston so all in all it was not a bad weekend considering the election campaigning has started and the Formula 1 was on and the former can annoy and the latter can be distracting.

It is always so good to see the Tigers jersey being worn on a court, just a few years ago things looked really glum when Larry Kestelman taken away the NBL Tigers from us all but on a personal level the Tigers being in NBL1 is satisfying well the Tigers being in any competition and not being extinct is satisfying though with Larry owning NBL1 it kind of sucks being attached to his business interests but that’s business, sometimes you don’t get to choose your dance partner in it.

As usual, I am hoping for finals for both the Men and Women’s teams because a fan should always hope for success, you don’t want the club you love to have a miserable season by finishing last or something, you want them to win as many games as possible and hopefully win the big one.

Well I look forward to watching the streamed games from Queensland this year, I wish the Tigers had general membership so I could spend $50 on the club like I was able to a few years ago.

Two weeks to go, can’t wait.

March 3 2022

Greetings fellow Melbourne Tigers fans,

Last weekend the Tigers Men got a practice game in against the Broncos and it was good seeing the Tigers back in action after so long without them even if there was no sound on YouTube to tell people who was on court and what was going on, thankfully the scoreboard was visible to allow it to be followed.

COVID seems to be less of a problem in Australia so it looks like we will get to have a 2022 season after two heavily disrupted years which is good, now players just got to stay healthy through it.

Hopefully there will be live streaming of games so people can keep track of all the action instead of reading live stats which can be boring and it can take forever to find out what exactly is going on.

Andrew Gaze is back coaching the Men and that is interesting, we just got to hope that media commitments don’t cause a disruption to the season as Andrew is highly in demand but they seem to have got it all worked out.

Warrick Giddey is coaching the Women’s team and it will be a different team now that Monique Conti is playing for another team in the competition which will be weird to see but that is sport, people switch teams for a variety of reasons all the time but clubs live on from that and the Tigers will live on and hopefully beat the new team to get those vital points.

It’s hard looking at the NBL results and seeing a Melbourne team up the top and knowing it is not the Melbourne Tigers there but thankfully there is NBL1 and the Melbourne Tigers are there and that is good enough for me.

I can’t wait to write down some more thoughts as the season gets underway, there is a lot to look forward to and hopefully it will be mostly good things.

Go Melbourne Tigers!

June 27 2021

Covid has killed off a lot of personal enthusiasm about the NBL1 season, lockdowns etc. have caused the season to stop and start and in the chaos of the world’s problems and the saturation of COVID news it is hard to remember when something starts again.

The Melbourne Tigers are having a mixed bag of a year, the men are struggling and the women are thriving in NBL1 South competition, the women have always done well since they came in as a SEABL team after all they were the first to make playoffs.

NBL1 South, that’s how much the second tier competition has changed as it used to be just NBL1 because other competitions around the country were singing from a different song sheet but now they’re all together under the guidance of the NBL.

It’s funny that the Tigers got away from Larry Kestelman only to end up in a competition with his fingers in the pie but that’s just the way it goes sometimes and the important thing is that we’re still alive and he can’t change the club like he done to the spin off Tigers.

Things will get better in this world and enthusiasm will rise, heck it is even rising while this is being typed out and perhaps that’s all that’s needed when you’re down about something, the chance to talk about things to remind yourself about what you love and give yourself the energy to do things.

Tigers Men are expecting some star power to return now the NBL season is done and dusted for the next couple of months so it will be interesting to see how the season goes from here.

Speaking of Melbourne United, they won a second NBL title the other day, they still need to win two more to match the Tigers in titles won, some may say United have won six but they way they go about things it is two to them and four to us.

Wouldn’t it be cool in the future if the Coburg Giants entered NBL1 then it would be a Tigers, Supercats, Giants and Spectres ex NBL team party.

We’re lucky people, I watch the Victorian Football Association pages on Facebook and see supporters mourn the losses of their many clubs and reminisce but we are lucky because our club had interests in Australian and Victorian Basketball so while we lost out in the national league, we’re still alive in NBL1 and BigV etc.

That’s it for now.

May 2 2020

With the 2020 NBL1 season cancelled, I haven’t had anything to do for the first time since the day Larry Kestelman decided to call the Melbourne Tigers NBL team the name Melbourne United.

It feels like yesterday that a bunch of fellow Melbourne Tigers fans tried to fight Melbourne United, of course the chances of stopping Melbourne United were slim but we were defending decades of history, decades of memories, decades of potential success in the future.

It was totally and completely worth every moment and will always be that way, many people have become friends, learned new things and some even found jobs they never thought was possible for them to have.

Then we were told or reminded about the original Melbourne Tigers, the club that spawned the spin off that graced the NBL for thirty years, they were in business and they had plans for the future.

Meanwhile regarding the NBL, Some who declined (that’s putting it politely) to follow United decided to follow the Sydney Kings when Andrew Gaze coached them, some of us picked other clubs and some just abandoned the NBL completely and haven’t looked back.

We watched how the Melbourne Tigers went from Big V to SEABL, saw the Men went from 3 wins to 7 wins and then threaten for finals and then finally made it to finals in NBL1 and before that we saw the Tigers add a Women’s team and they made the finals within two seasons.

Last year we got to see every game on YouTube and for somebody who lives in Queensland, it was the best thing since the Tigers won the last of their four NBL titles and it was even more special when the Men made the finals .

NBL1, isn’t it funny how we once again ended up under the gaze of Larry Kestelman but this time he only owns the competition and not the club so we cannot kill us off a second time.

This year we would of threatened to win the title, last years team was largely retained, some old favourites returned and things were looking sweet, then came COVID-19 and the end of a promising season before the began.

2021 will happen, hopefully those who signed on the dotted line in 2020 will do so again for 2021, may the fans who have gone away continue to find their way back home to MSAC as the Tigers play and may the city of Melbourne be proud of the Tigers.

July 18 2019

This weekend is the last weekend of the NBL1 regular season and the Melbourne Tigers Men have a chance of making finals.

The good news is that the Men have two games left and the bad news is that one is against the leading team Ballarat whilst the other one is against Eltham.

If Bendigo loses against Geelong and the Tigers win against either Ballarat or Eltham then the Tigers are in.

Bendigo, Dandenong, Melbourne and Waverley all have 10 wins, Bendigo has one game left and Dandenong, Melbourne and Waverley have two.

Waverley have to play against the teams from Tasmania and is tough to win over there, the Huskies are a tough team and the Tigers were lucky to get a win against them at MSAC after getting a pasting in Hobart weeks earlier.

Melbourne’s weakness is Free Throws, the side has had very bad luck with Free Throws and it has cost the team several victories.

Dane Pineau is a major key to Tigers success, the Tigers are a better side with him because he can score, rebound and block but most importantly he brings others into the game.

The Tigers have plenty of scoring options and if they can get each other into the game then they will be a problem for Ballarat and Eltham.

The Women have had a tougher season but if they can beat Ballarat and Eltham and Waverley loses both their games and 2% then there is a chance they can make it.

The chances of success are small as Waverley has both Tasmanian teams away but if Waverley stumbles there’s a chance providing the Tigers bag both wins.

If the players shoot accurately and get each other into the game then it is going to be an interesting weekend.

Go Tigers!