Snake Eyes – Taipans v Kings Round 2

The CQUniversity Cairns Taipans return to the Pop-Up Arena on Saturday night for the third time within a week and it's a strong response from Monday and backing up the win from seven days ago on their mind.

The Taipans got their 2021 NBL season underway last Saturday night at home to the Sydney Kings and came away with the thrilling 87-86 victory.

Things didn’t quite go as well on Monday night against the Hawks and the resultant 16-point defeat in front of the Orange Army means there'll be no shortage of motivation to bounce back.

The Snakes get the chance to do that this Saturday night back at the pop-up and once again the opponent is the Kings.

With the Taipans desperate to respond to Monday's loss and the Kings out for revenge for last Saturday, there's no shortage of fascinating things to look out for coming into the game, and here are five of them for you: 

1. RESPONSE TO MONDAY NIGHT THE GOAL
It wasn’t the Monday night showcase the Taipans were hoping against the Hawks but they can put that behind them with a response now on Saturday

Saturday night wasn’t a perfect display from the Cairns Taipans but they showed impressive fight and heart that even without playing their best to grind it out, and find a way to record a hard earned victory over the Sydney Kings.

The hope was that some of the opening night cobwebs were shaken out and then the Snakes would come out with an improved showing two days later against the Hawks.

Both teams were coming off having played on Saturday with the Hawks coming off beating the Bullets in Brisbane, so both were in the same situation of a quick turnaround.

It wasn’t the night the Taipans were hoping for, though, with the Snakes trailing virtually the whole game, falling down by 20 and ending up losing by 16. 

Along the way, the Hawks outrebounded the Taipans by eight, had 44 points in the paint to 26, 17 points from the 14 turnovers Cairns had, and also ended up taking eight more shots and getting 16 points off the bench to four.

None of those are numbers the Taipans will want to replicate, but they would have been addressed this week in the lead up to Saturday night against the Kings.

There were positives including the 20 points from Majok Deng and 16 from Kouat Noi while Cam Oliver battled hard for 16 points and 13 rebounds, and Scott Machado had another double-double, but it was largely a performance for the Snakes to put behind them.

That can only be done now if they respond by playing well on Saturday night again in front of the Orange Army against the Kings at the Pop-Up Arena.

2. SPACE CAM HUNGRY TO STEP UP FURTHER
Cam Oliver certainly didn’t have a bad opening round averaging a double-double but the Taipans superstar is looking to offer more in Round 2

Cam Oliver had a brilliant 2019/20 NBL season that saw him cement himself as one of the best players in the league and put him on the radar for an NBA opportunity, and that meant expectations were huge for him coming into #NBL21.

Oliver's signature for the 2021 NBL season was a hotly sought after on on the back of the season he delivered a year ago where he averaged 17.4 points, 9.7 rebounds, 1.6 blocks and 1.2 assists a game to be considered unlucky to not make the All-First Team all though he was named to the All-Second one.

There had been question marks over his durability coming into the NBL season after a tough injury run, but he put all those doubts behind him and as a result there wasn’t a club in the league who wouldn’t have welcomed him for this campaign.

But he didn’t want to play anywhere but again in Cairns and his Round 1 performance in both games against the Kings and Hawks was pretty solid averaging 14 points, 12 rebounds and 3.5 blocks.

That meant he was close to being the best player for the Taipans across the two matches, but after the game on Monday night he was looking at ways both he and the team could have performed better.

Oliver was a little frustrated feeling the Taipans hadn’t come out and given their best shot in the opening round, and as a result he is expecting a different looking team for Round 2 starting Saturday night against the Kings.

"I think I was just trying to do whatever was best for the team," Oliver said.

"We haven’t really thrown that first punch yet with these past two games so right now I'm just trying to absorb that and kind of do what our concepts and game plan is.

"I'll just stick to my role and do what I possibly can to help the team out, and help myself out to stay involved and keep the energy going."

3. DEALING WITH A DETERMINED OPPONENT
The Taipans might be hungry to bounce back but the Sydney Kings came away feeling they let one slip in the first encounter in Cairns

As much as the Cairns Taipans will be hungry to respond strongly on Saturday night, there are going to be two teams out there and it's not as if the Sydney Kings will be lacking any motivation.

The Kings were the NBL team to beat a season ago. From the moment they won their season opening game in Cairns against the Taipans, they held top spot in the standings to claim the regular season championship.

They would go on to beat Melbourne United in three games of the semi finals and set up a Grand Final match up with the Perth Wildcats. 

That series was ultimately cut short after three games and with the Kings winning just one of them, the title was award to the 'Cats and that's been a driving motivating factor for those returning on the Sydney team ever since.

The Kings did feel hard done by and then in the opening game of the season on Saturday night in Cairns, they did lead against the Taipans most of the way before being overrun late.

Still they had a shot with the last possession of the game to snatch the win. 

Sydney coach Adam Forde made his thoughts clear post-match of what he thought of a non-shooting foul call late on Casper Ware before it was Ware who took a three-point attempt as time ran out which missed to give the Snakes the one-point win.

While the Taipans immediately turned their focus to playing the Hawks on Monday night, the Kings had a whole week to spend in Cairns analysing that game, working on improving and getting themselves ready for the return encounter back at the Pop-Up Arena this Saturday night.

The Kings are going to be high on motivation coming into the game and they aren’t short on talent either. 

With experienced heads like Ware, Brad Newley and Shaun Bruce leading the way for exciting young talent Didi Louzada, Jordan Hunter and DJ Vasiljevic not to mention import centre Jarell Martin and potentially even Daniel Kickert if he is deemed fit, and that's a strong squad. 

With motivation thrown in, the Taipans are going to have to be on song to deny Sydney its first win of the season.

4. KEEP SHOOTING BUT TRY TO BE OPEN
Coach Kelly is happy for the Taipans to make the three ball a big part of their offence but preferably for those to be more open looks

The Cairns Taipans were in love with the three ball over the opening two games of the NBL season and that's not necessarily a concern for coach Mike Kelly, but he would like his team to take more care in getting good, open looks and not settling from beyond the arc.

The Taipans went 13/32 at 40 per cent from the three-point land on Saturday night in the win over the Sydney Kings. That’s going at a pretty good clip so would suggest a lot of them were good looks with Mirko Djeric going 4/7 to be the standout alongside Kouat Noi who went 3/3.

Scott Machado ended up going 3/11, Cam Oliver 1/5, Mojave King 1/3 and Jarrod Kenny 1/1.

Then two nights later on the same court against the Hawks, Cairns went 11/39 from beyond the arc at 28 per cent.

Some of those looks weren’t great and a lot were contested with Noi finishing with 4/9, Majok Deng 2/6, Djeric 2/7, Machado 2/7 and Oliver 1/6.

The 39 three-point attempts on Monday from the Taipans was the second most ever by the club in a 40-minute NBL game, and their average of 35.5 shots from deep over the two games was the most by any team in league history in the opening round even factoring in the 48-minute era.

The Taipans had 56.5 per cent of their shots coming from deep against the Hawks which is the highest percentage under Kelly as coach and the 10th highest in league history.

Reigning NBL Coach of the Year Kelly is happy for the Snakes to be a three-point shooting team as long as they are taking right shots.

"I definitely encourage our guys to take open threes, that's one thing that I feel like we have as a strength of our team," Kelly said.

"But if we just take threes and they are contested, then it's tough to make them and that's more of what it was like in that last game. 

"We didn’t get in the paint consistently and when we did, we turned the ball over especially in that first half and we didn’t get great shots. I love our guys to take open threes but we need to work to get those threes as open looks."

5. STARTING BETTER NOT THE SOLE FOCUS
Starts to games haven’t been ideal so far for the Snakes and while coach Kelly wants that to improve it's not the only area of focus

The Cairns Taipans didn’t start overly well in either Round 1 game and while it is something coach Mike Kelly wants to get on top of, he doesn’t think it came from anything like complacency or not being switched on.

Against the Kings on Saturday night, the Taipans did concede the first two scores of the game and quickly trailed by five points which had grown to six by quarter-time having given up 30 points to Sydney.

In the opening quarter, Cairns had eight fewer rebounds than Sydney while gathering just one offensive board and having only four bench points. They were all areas that improved the longer the game went.

Then on Monday night against the Hawks, the visitors were on fire early after Mirko Djeric's three free-throws opened the contest. The Hawks scored the next eight points and soon led 16-8, and 31-19 by quarter-time on the back of a 10-0 run.

Again Cairns was able to settle in the second quarter to make a game of it even if the end result didn’t go their way.

The Snakes gave up an average of 30.5 points over those two games in the opening quarter when they only conceded 30 or more points four times in all of the 2019/20 season with only one of those occasions happening on their home floor.

Taipans coach Mike Kelly saw some concerns in the opening quarter but doesn’t think it will be an on-going trend.

"I definitely think we haven’t started the way we've wanted to, not necessarily because of energy. They scored some baskets, we came back and then they had the last two minutes of that first quarter," Kelly said.

"It's a concern to give up 30 points in a quarter but really to give up 10 points in two minutes is a huge concern where we didn’t close out that quarter very well."