HOOPS Review - Game 9: ABSG Reapers vs The Answer

What’s up!

I’m hoping you enjoyed your weekend, and happy Hump Day!

I’m also delighted to announce that your Reapers have now won back-to-back games for the first time this season, with a statement 54-50 win over the current second seed team, The Answer! It wasn’t smooth sailing all the way through, but when has that actually been the case for us this season? Napthali again showed us he can be a leading scorer contributing 17 points with Jericho adding 10. Zakai and Zavante both contributed 7 points each and a nice return from Jorel with 6 points and 2 assists. Let’s get into it!

What didn’t go so well…

Even though we won it was still a rocky game for us on both ends of the floor. We started out pretty well defensively and dictated the pace quite well, but once our opponents started to hit a few shots, we almost panicked too much and tried to speed things up, which just made our play sloppy. The Answer took a bit of a lead after the first quarter, but we were able to pull it back to a two-point lead going into half-time. Towards the end of the game was a little bit nervy; we managed not have a shot clock quite well and didn’t rush anything for the last two minutes. However on a break-away to make it a three-possession game, Nap tried to dunk the ball instead of a simple lay-up and subsequently missed, which kind of threw everyone off a little. Luckily for us, our opponents couldn’t capitalize, we made our free throws, and that was all she wrote!

What went pretty well…

Similarly to last week’s one-point win, we made this one a lot more difficult than it needed to be, but we were again able to lock-in, slow the game down and see the game out in the 4th. Nap had a great clutch performance from the free-throw line, going 4-4 in the last 30 seconds of the game after he was purposefully fouled. It’s been awesome to see his development as a scorer this season! No surprise, but we again controlled the boards on both ends of the floor, outrebounding The Answer 28-22, giving us more confidence that when we out-rebound our opponents, we go on to win the game, as evidenced by our three victories this season. Jorel also made his full return in this game, which is encouraging for us going into our last game (which is yet to be re-scheduled) and then the playoffs. Unfortunately, this was Zavante’s last game with us as he is moving to Texas before our next game, so only right to send him off with a win!

What to look forward to next game…

Our final regular season game is against the Young Goatz, which was postponed two weeks ago. There are still games to be played this coming Saturday, so I imagine it will be next week rather than this week.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this mid-week review, look out for the next edition on Friday!

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Jason