The Gold Coast Blaze have bounced back after their loss to Townsville on Friday to record a comfortable 13-point win over the Cairns Taipans, 79-66 at the Cairns Convention Centre on Saturday night.
The early stages of the match were a tight affair with Julien 'Skip' Mills for the Taipans and Chris Goulding for the Blaze both shooting with a hot hand adding eight and seven points respectively in the opening minutes.
But Cairns lost touch with the Blaze in the first quarter as a result of poor shooting (33 percent from the charity stripe and two-point range and 20 percent from outside the arc) in the first quarter.
Late in the first quarter Gold Coast import Erron Maxey (six points and four first quarter rebounds) stepped up to give his side the ascendancy and a 23-15 quarter time lead.
The eight point deficit that Cairns faced was erased within three minutes of the second quarter as the home side went on a 13-0 run. The run ended when Ayinde Ubaka hit his second three-point shot of the night but not before the Taipans had hit the lead 28-23.
Troy Demos and Goulding joined Ubaka with success from outside the arc as the Gold Coast hit four three pointers for the quarter and just as quickly as they lost their eight point lead, they had regained it to lead 42-34 at half time.
The Taipans’ shooting woes continued in the third quarter as only Skip Mills (24 points) kept the home side within reach of the Blaze. But Goulding (19 points) along with the help of James Harvey kept the Gold Coast momentum rolling and extended the lead to 11 points at the final change.
The fourth quarter was a repeat of the third with the Gold Coast continuing to control the match courtesy of Maxey who along with Mika Vukona combined for 20 rebounds for the match as the Blaze dominated the boards (48-34) and Ubaka (17 points) made the Taipans pay with 60 percent shooting from the field.
The Taipans captain Phill Jones will be disappointed to have contributed no points during his 20 minutes on court as the Taipans shot at less than 35 percent from the field for the match.
The Taipans (9-13) will need to start a perfect run to the end of the season if they are to make the play offs starting Wednesday night in Adelaide when they take on the 36ers while the Blaze (12-8) have a few extra days to prepare for their next game when they play Adelaide on Friday Jan 15 at home.
Gold Coast Blaze 79 (Goulding 19, Ubaka 17, Harvey 14)
Cairns Taipans 66 (Mills 24, Grabau 11, Williams 10)
@ Cairns Convention Centre, 9/01/2010 Crowd 3,851
