Round 4: Taipans fall at home to Breakers

CQUniversity Cairns Taipans (64) lost to New Zealand Breakers (68)
Round 4 | Cairns Convention Centre
Next Game: Taipans at Kings, Saturday 29 October 7:00pm AEST

SUMMARY

The CQUniversity Cairns Taipans clamped down the New Zealand Breakers in record fashion early but could never quite get going offensively at Cairns Convention Centre on Sunday.

As a result, the Breakers were able to overcome missing their first 15 field goal attempts and recording the equal lowest ever first quarter score of five points in NBL history to claim the 68-64 road victory.

Thank goodness for DJ Hogg in the first quarter. He scored the game's first 10 points including two three-point knockdowns with the Breakers going on to miss their opening 15 field goal attempts.

They even missed their first free-throw but eventually Barry Brown opened their account at the charity stripe and with a field goal with 8:25 gone in the quarter.

That would be New Zealand's only shot made in the quarter as they equalled the NBL record of five points for lowest ever first quarters. Cairns didn’t do a whole lot better offensively but did lead 16-5 thanks to 11 points from Hogg.

Cairns stretched that advantage to 22-9 early in the second quarter before the Breakers finally got something going and went on a 7-0 run to close the gap to four.

However, the Snakes responded starting with a triple from Jonah Antonio and finishing with a three from Hogg to be back up double-digits, and still leading 32-23 by half-time despite Izayah Le'afa hitting New Zealand's only three of the half in 17 attempts.

After a horror opening to the game including missing all six shots in the first quarter, Jarrell Brantley got going early in the second half for the Breakers. He hit consecutive three-pointers to make it a four-point ball game.

The Snakes still clung to a five-point lead at three quarter-time before the Breakers hit the first five points of the fourth term, and then a three-point bomb from Next Star Rayan Rupert put them in front for the first time with six minutes to play.

Mirko Djeric and Brown traded three balls with things heating up. Hogg and Brown then did the same but the Breakers' job was becoming tougher with Will McDowell-White and Brantley fouling out.

However, Le'afa hit a three with just over two minutes to go to see them lead by that but there was plenty left to play out. Shannon Scott regained a one-point lead for the Snakes with 36.6 seconds to go.

Out of a timeout, Brown attacked the rim and was fouled where he made both with Keanu Pinder fouling out to put New Zealand back on top. Scott missed a good look for the Snakes with Brown fouled and made the pair again to ultimately seal the win.

STATISTICS

It was a tough offensive night for both teams especially in the first half.

DJ Hogg had 11 points on 4/6 shooting in the first quarter alone while the rest of his team went 1/7 for five points and the Breakers had the five points on 1/17 shooting. The two teams outside of Hogg went 2/24 for 10 points.

By the end of the game, Cairns shot just 21/63 at 33 per cent from the field and 9/34 at 36 per cent from three-point range. New Zealand went 25/66 at 37 per cent overall and 8/29 at 27 per cent from downtown.

On top of the 25 points and five rebounds for Hogg on 4/11 three-point shooting, Bul Kuol finished with 13 points and four boards, Shannon Scott six points, eight assists and six rebounds, and Pinder six points and 12 rebounds.

Mirko Djeric added five points and three rebounds, Majok Deng four points, two rebounds and two assists, Jonah Antonio three points, and Sam Waardenburg two points and three assists.

STATEMENTS

Head Coach Adam Forde: 

"Everything seemed like a bit of a grind today. It was a great turnout with a touch over 4000 and I think about the part I played in that by amping up the importance of us wanting to put a good product on the floor for everyone to get behind. Even that first quarter when we did a good job defensively, we just couldn’t get out of the teens each quarter and the ball stuck. Everything was just unnecessarily held up and there was a lot of errors that we made. Then with this young group as we are sort of building our collective identity and maturity, you start to see some guys start to lose a bit of confidence and faith. We would try to maintain a bit of momentum and reward ourselves on the defensive end for getting it done, but damn, we'd just come down and it was a struggle. Even late there was a chance to come down and tie it or take the lead, and we gave the ball to DJ and everyone just stood there. That was disappointing that we didn’t get to our end of game sets or end of quarter sets. We sort of just threw the ball to DJ and asked him to bail us out. That's not what we do. It was just unfortunate and it's a disappointing result but the main thing now is that we have to learn from it, we have to build towards moving forward and we've got a week to prepare for another tough game in Sydney."

Taipans Guard Bul Kuol:

"I think our defence held us in it the whole time but we just never found rhythm offensively. Even myself I got a couple of wide open shots that didn’t go in so it was a little frustrating because we were getting good looks even though we weren’t executing as we wanted to. I think we are still maturing because it's a new group and we're only six games in. We are just maturing offensively and we've bought in defensively where we are on the same page. Our offence is still catching up and when it catches up, that's when everything will take off."