Andrew Gaze

Tigers Sweep the Spectres……Just!

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The Melbourne Tigers got their first sweep of the season, though it almost wasn’t to be thanks to a late charge by the Spectres Men.

The Tigers Women moved to 2-2 after comfortably defeating Nunawading 88 to 71.

It was a fairly even first half with the Tigers ahead by six points at the half, they doubled their lead by the end of the third period and then increased it by five in the last to win by 17 points and even up their season.

Samantha Simons top scored for the Tigers with 23 points followed by Jade Melbourne with 18 points, Jade topped the Rebounds and Assists with twelve and eleven of them respectively.

54.24% of two-point attempts went in and 35% of three-point attempts went in, the Tigers three point shooting improved in the second half with 50% going in both periods compared to 25% and 16.67% in the first two periods.

The Men were on court next their new look and the new looked seemed to have worked wonders as they scored 29 points in the first period to take a comfortable 16 point lead.

It was a 23-point lead at half time and most teams would feel comfortable with that big of a lead, but Nunawading are a good team and they outscored the Tigers by 10 in the third to reel the margin in to a more manageable 13 points.

Melbourne’s 3-point percentage dropped from a high of 60% in the second period to 0% in the last as they missed all three attempts, Nunawading had eleven attempts with three of them landing.

With twelve seconds to go it was a 80-79 score when a foul brought Jack Purchase to the line and he put in both to move the margin back out to three, Nunawading had two attempts for a three to tie but both missed, the Tigers won 82-79 to win their first game of the season.

So, both Tigers teams are on the board with wins, they’ve got Dandenong next and hopefully they can get another sweep and start charging up the ladder.

Go Tigers.



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The 2023 Season

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April 1 is not a joke this year as the Melbourne Tigers start playing in NBL1 South competition for the first time in 2023.

It is true that there hasn’t been a whole lot to say in the last couple of years, life sometimes gets too busy to sit down and write down the joys and the frustrations that a season brings and last year was one of frustration.

Regardless of the results, life always feels good when the Melbourne Tigers are part of Basketball, it is one of those constants in life that is always needed.

It is good that YouTube can be turned on and see how things are going, it is not traditional TV, but it does the job as you can watch it on a TV and the quality is pretty good and the commentators are informative.

It is hard to know if the Tigers will do well this year, the Womens team have brought in experience this year after having a largely youthful team last year which wasn’t a bad idea, you got to get the kilometres into players and giving youth players a run in the NBL1 competition gives the Big V competition that extra bit of oomph and moves development along.

The Men could do well this year, when they get going, they are a great team but when their shooting goes cold the opposition makes the Tigers pay every time hence why last year a frustrating year (thanks Channel Ten) of basketball.

They say Saturday nights all right for fighting well Saturday night will be all right for basketball.

The Age Sport wrongly targets Andrew Gaze

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When Andrew Gaze was interviewed by Fox Sports today, he wouldn’t of expected The Age to post on Twitter that he questioned Melbourne United’s sportsmanship with the Age Sport saying ‘Andrew Gaze joins chorus questioning Melbourne United sportsmanship‘.

The headline on the actual article does little better with the headline stating ‘Andrew Gaze joins chorus questioning Melbourne United’s win over NZ Breakers‘

Andrew like many others questioned the referee’s decision that enabled Melbourne United to tie the scores before another questionable foul handed the side the win.

Andrew said “It was a shocking, shocking way for a game to end in basketball,” and “What a shemozzle, that is just umpires not understanding the spirit of the game, the way it should be played and that is just an unfortunate mistake, they’ve made a bad mistake.”

As you can see Andrew does not mention Melbourne United and is talking about the umpires and the spirit of the game, there is no doubt the controversial headlines will get The Age (Melbourne’s #2 paper) readers but will no doubt gain a reputation for click bait headlines that have no shred of truth to it.

The Age Sport, You’ve been given a foul and it’s a correct one too.

Wrong

Wrong 2

Tigers on radio

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The Melbourne Tigers have had many media suiting personalities in the team over the years and it is good that we can hear or see some of them regularly in the media as well.

Tigers fans can get their Andrew Gaze fix five days a week on SEN’s ‘Morning Glory’, he joins Andy Maher and Tim Watson to discuss all there is to do with sport and more, the show runs from 7am to 9am and can be heard here on SEN’s website or if listeners want to catch up on individual interviews can choose from here.

Nigel Purchase is also on SEN when he discusses NBA and NBL with Kevin Bartlett on ‘Hungry For Sport’, Nigel is a dedicated Tiger and while it must no doubt be distasteful for him to talk United, he does it with professionalism and we know one day he’ll be talking about the Tigers again soon, to go through ‘Hungry For Sport’ audio visit the show’s page here.

WANMU will continue to report on Tigers on the radio to point you towards the best news and information from the Tigers stars and legends themselves.

Copeland and Gaze to battle on the sidelines

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Andrew Gaze’s Melbourne Tigers will be taking on Lanard Copeland’s Hume City Broncos in their BigV clash this Saturday night (March 28) in a game the promises to be interesting for Tigers fans who get to see the two NBL legends (and good friends) try to outwit each other with their team’s on court.

The game will commence from 8pm at the Broadmeadows Basketball Stadium with the Tigers (0-2) hoping to win their first game of the season while Hume City (2-1) hope to continue their Top 5 form.

The Melbourne Tigers women’s team (0-2) is also taking on Hume City (2-0) at Broadmeadows Basketball Stadium on Saturday night with their game commencing from 6pm, Tigers fans are encouraged to if possible to attend this game as well as the Men’s game to give the side support and encouragement as they too seek to open their win account against a side that has won their two games by an average of 21 points.

Gaze returns fire on Worthington’s comments

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Andrew Gaze taken to 1116 SEN today to counter Mark Worthington’s claims that he had made the previous day on the station.

From the opening second Andrew Gaze counter attacked the claims with passion and most importantly factual points, Andrew Gaze explained what had happened at Basketball Australia board level in 2009 when Basketball Australia merged with the NBL to save the league and what happened when BA and the NBL largely parted company.

Andrew Gaze was passionate in his defense but also used logic to defend his stance and was not afraid to admit to admit any faults when he made his original comment several days ago.

Melbourne United is no doubt now stuck between a rock and a hard place, do they support and back their captain’s comments, do they stand back from what is going on or do they publicly and/or privately chastise their captain for his comments?.

This is not a battle between Melbourne Tigers and Melbourne United fans but instead a battle over a great sportsman’s honour and reputation, Mark Worthington for all the good he had done for the Tigers has no doubt lost plenty of respect with his attack on Andrew Gaze and fans of the sport and the Melbourne Tigers will be remembering his comments for a very long time to come.

Fans can politely give @SENNews on Twitter (click on the link) their thoughts on the comments made by Mark Worthington and Andrew Gaze’s reply to them, WANMU advises fans not to hurl abuse at Mark Worthington, SEN, the NBL or Melbourne United despite the temptation to do so in defense of their sporting hero.

Readers can listen to both Mark Worthington and Andrew Gaze’s comments at http://www.sen.com.au/audio and WANMU will continue to update readers on the latest developments as they happen.

NBL community largely disagrees with Gaze

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Andrew Gaze’s call for the NBL to shut down for a season to fix it’s problems has been widely dismissed by the NBL, teams and fans.

Some basketball figures and newspaper publications have even suggested that Gaze’s call is company motivated for he is on the Basketball Australia board and a shutdown of the NBL would revert the rights of the competition to Basketball Australia, Basketball Australia once controlled the NBL and holds many of it’s intellectual property rights before the NBL broke free to run it’s own operations and many suspect they would be happy to see a shutdown happen.

To many Australian basketball fans, Andrew Gaze is God of Australian Basketball and his opinions are always highly regarded but fans also know that Andrew Gaze loves the NBL very much, the NBL named a medal after him, he played more two decades with the Melbourne Tigers in the competition and he even commentates on NBL games and so the thought that Andrew Gaze made such a call based on company/board desires or politics is rubbish, the man wants to save the competition for the good of the sport and the viewing public.

The NBL still has the problem of the 2014/15 potentially being a six team competition instead of the anticipated nine team competition meaning that teams will be playing each other more often and leading to a situation where marketing matches may become difficult because fans will be seeing the same teams visit too often and if one is having a great season and one isn’t that will be extremely boring.

There’s been a lot of talk about a promising future for the NBL but at the moment there is nothing but the same old chatter and little to no action, perhaps the NBL should go ask what the WNBL are doing for they seem to have great players, more teams and even less of them dying and until very recently constant TV coverage.

Instead of writing #WeAreTheNBL on Twitter, NBL fans should be tweeting #WeWantBetterNBL and the sooner it’s better NBL is delivered the better for everyone who loves the game and is sick of the losses of teams, the loss of good coverage and more.

WANU Tigers SEN wrap

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Andrew Gaze and Nigel Purchase have been on SEN in the last week to talk up Basketball and other topics, Andrew of course co-hosts ‘The Morning Glory’ and one segment had Ask Gazey where he answered questions from those on Twitter who had #AskGazey,

Nigel Purchase appeared on Kevin Bartlett’s ‘Hungry for Sport’ where he talked about his son Jack and his college basketball experience in the US, they discussed Golf and then talked a little about D-Mac and Brian Goorjian, United’s form and who they will be coming up against while suggesting people check out the game .

Could China bring Tigers hopes to life?

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Tigers fans listening to SEN this morning were surprised to learn that Andrew Gaze is currently in China on personal business which has lead to speculation that Mr Gaze could pick up some sponsors for the Melbourne Tigers SEABL effort while he is doing his business over there.

While it seems China is an odd place for chasing sponsors, it is not too far-fetched considering China’s rise as a world power and also the Tigers had Chinese sponsorship during it’s successful NBL finals campaigns of the late 00’s and so perhaps the Chinese companies who had some dealings with the Gaze family may feel inclined to go around with them again only this time be part of a new adventure.

Then again Andrew Gaze could be just putting his feet up watching the Chinese play ball and maybe even call in on former Tigers player and Tigers coaching rival Brian Goorjian or some other pals over there, speculation can sometimes be a wondrous thing.

Tigers expansion plans now public

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Melbourne Tigers fans woke up this morning to the news that all the speculation about the long road towards return of the Melbourne Tigers to the NBL is true and the work to make it happen is underway, the Tigers will not be in the NBL for a couple of years for finances will need to be secured to make a re-entry possible but the team will make every effort to get there.

Nigel Purchase and Andrew Gaze were both talked to on SEN during the day with Nigel\s appearance on SEN’s ‘Hungry for Sport’ available at https://soundcloud.com/sen1116/hungry-for-sport-nigel-purchase-nbl-veteran while Andrew’s appearance of SEN’s ‘Harf Time’ is available at

The Melbourne Tigers are planning to have a team compete in SEABL which is considered by many to be equal or superior to the NBL before the team either expands or returns solely to the NBL, it is hoped that by going the SEABL route the Tigers return to the NBL will be successful from the resumption of the team’s 30 year existence in the league.

Melbourne Tigers will also be working to provide women the opportunity to play for the famed club in the WNBL, the Tigers entry into the WNBL would no doubt provide a boost to the league which has enjoyed success over the last couple of years compared to the struggles of the NBL.

Tigers fans are encouraged to keep their eyes and ears open in the coming weeks and months as more details will come to hand and there is no doubt now that fans will be eager to participate in any move to make the Tigers return happen sooner rather than later.