Taipans battle hard at home to Phoenix

The CQUniversity Cairns Taipans battled hard but ultimately their shots just didn’t fall enough to stop the South East Melbourne Phoenix leaving Cairns Convention Centre with the 86-74 victory.

The two teams did battle on Friday night in Far North Queensland with the Snakes attempting to string wins together and the Phoenix to snap a four-game losing streak, and it was a tight battle for much of the first three quarters.

However, South East Melbourne was able to pull away in the early parts of fourth quarter on the way to the 12-point win while taking advantage of Cairns shooting just 5/29 at 17 per cent from three-point territory.

Tahjere McCall ended up top-scoring for Cairns with 14 points to go with 10 rebounds and five assists in a strong all-round showing.

All Scott Machado's 12 points came in the first half but he also had five assists and three rebounds for the night with Keanu Pinder battling hard for 12 points and nine boards.

Kouat Noi had a good impact too in his 18 minutes off the bench with 12 points and three rebounds on 4/6 shooting with Majok Deng adding 11 points, three boards and two steals.

Nate Jawai also finished with six points and seven rebounds, Jordan Ngatai four points and two boards, and Bul Kuol three points.

Jarrod Kenny played his 200th NBL game but in typical selfless fashion, he was only interested in the team aspect.

"To be honest I didn’t really put too much thought into it having any more importance than any other game," Kenny said. 

"It would have been nice to get a win and that was my only real goal for tonight. Obviously it's a milestone and it's an achievement, but for me I'd rather have the win."

Taipans coach Adam Forde saw areas of improvement but still wants to see more of it now over the last nine games of the season.

"The start of the third quarter especially sort of summed it up where credit to South East they did a great job of keeping on going back to the well of what was working for them," Forde said.

"You can see the layers of where we're looking to adjust and are getting better, we just need to do it in a shorter window now. But we are learning and there's some great teaching points especially for some of our guys in tonight's game."

Brandon Ashley put up 25 points for South East Melbourne with Xavier Munford adding 23 points, five rebounds and four assists.

The Snakes got the perfect start with Tahjere McCall finding Keanu Pinder for a dunk straight from the tip. McCall then scored for the 4-0 start and when he knocked down a three soon after, the home team was up 11-6.

South East Melbourne needed to respond and they did with the next 10 points starting with Mitch Creek opening his account before triples from Xavier Munford and Izayah Le'afa.

However, the Taipans weren’t going away and when Scott Machado connected from deep the scores were level but Lachlan Barker gave the Phoenix the 24-22 quarter-time lead.

Machado and Pinder gave Cairns the first four points of the second quarter to give them the lead but with Munford continuing to prove unstoppable on his way to 17 first half points, the Phoenix worked their way back on top.

They went on a 9-2 streak shortly before half-time and that saw them lead 43-38 at the break with the Snakes getting 12 points and four assists from Machado despite the team only going 4/18 from downtown.

The Phoenix opened up the second half on fire with the first four points to Ashley, and then after Cairns got a three from Majok Deng, South East Melbourne kept rolling with the next eight points to suddenly lead by 14.

From there the Phoenix still held a 10-point edge by three quarter-time and it didn’t take long into the fourth quarter for Ashley to add five more points of his own and to help to extend is team's lead out to 14 before securing the 12-point win.

Both teams will be backing up to play again in Round 17 on Sunday with the Taipans back at the Cairns Convention Centre to play the New Zealand Breakers.

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL ROUND 17

CQUNIVERSITY CAIRNS TAIPANS 74 (McCall 14, Machado 12, Noi 12)

SOUTH EAST MELBOURNE PHOENIX 86 (Ashley 25, Munford 23, Creek 14) 

BOX SCORE