In front of a hostile sellout crowd Friday night in Wollongong, the Sydney Kings fell to 2-1 in the preseason with a tough 86-80 loss to last season’s NBL Grand Finalists the Wollongong Hawks.
In their first game against legitimate NBL opposition, the Kings showed they will be highly competitive in the league this season, and although disappointed by the result, Coach Ian Robilliard was encouraged by the effort of his team.
“As I said to the guys after the game, there were a lot of positive aspects we can take away from tonight”, he said.
“We’re around the money and we can compete”.
“In the end it was a few defensive lapses, a few too many turnovers under pressure situations and some poor decisions made in offensive execution that cost us tonight. We just need to make some minor adjustments and we’ll be fine”.
Both teams came in to the game undermanned.
The Hawks were without their new American point guard Gary Ervin, who failed to get his immigration clearance in time and backup guard Rhys Martin, who is out for a couple of months with an ankle injury; while Blagoj Janev, Ben Knight and Damien Ryan were all out for the Kings.
But their absence didn’t detract from the spectacle. It was just like old times at a packed Snakepit as the teams renewed a fierce rivalry that had taken a two year hiatus and the passion, the intensity and the raw emotion were still in evidence.
The Kings were coming off an unimpressive win over the Maitland Mustangs All Stars, and were determined to show they are for real in 2010/2011.
Right from tip-off they played with a great deal more effort than they displayed the previous week, and with centre Julian Khazzouh a dominant force inside jumped to a 15-11 lead with four minutes left in the opening period.
A 9-0 run keyed by consecutive three pointers from Wollongong backup forward Tim Coenraad wrested away the momentum however, and Sydney were having problems dealing with the activity of Hawks’ big man David Gruber.
But the Kings weren’t there just to make up the numbers, and behind import forward Rod Grizzard, who was playing with a great deal of aggression offensively, stayed close at the first change down just four points, 26-22.
Khazzouh and Grizzard continued to produce in the second quarter, but the period belonged to the Hawks' Coenraad, who at one stage had an incredible 15 straight points as Wollongong surged to a 45-34 lead on the back of a 10-2 run midway through the quarter.
The Kings were struggling in defensive transition to the chagrin of the coaching staff, but they hung tough in the last couple of minutes. Graeme Dann went hard to the rack for the deuce and Kevin White knocked in a long range bomb at the buzzer to cut the Hawks’ advantage to six, 45-39, at the main change.
It was a fired-up Kings who took the floor for the third period.
They came out with a purpose, as the impressive Ben Madgen nailed a trey from the corner and Grizzard fed Taj McCullough for the two-hand slam to help Sydney close the gap.
Gruber had six points to keep his team ahead, but Khazzouh was unstoppable in the paint, and when Luke Cooper nailed a long range bomb from the top of the key with three minutes left, the Kings had their first lead since early in the opening period.
It was nip and tuck the rest of the quarter, with a Coenraad jumper giving his team a 65-64 lead with tem minutes left to play.
Knowing they had no chance of containing Khazzouh one on one, the Hawks opened the final period in a zone and it seemed to work as the Kings began to struggle to get into an offensive flow.
Wollongong jumped out to a five point lead, but the Kings were showing plenty of that renowned fighting spirit, and they refused to let the Hawks pull away as the noise in the old gym went to a new level.
A massive Grizzard three at the shot clock buzzer tied the game at 74 with four minutes remaining in the game, and we looked set for a thrilling finish.
However, Wollongong upped the defensive pressure considerably, and forced the Kings into error. On three straight possessions, the Hawk D forced Sydney to cough up the ball, and the home team made the Kings pay dearly for their mistakes.
Some hustling play from Wollongong guard Tyson Demos capped by his killer three pointer pushed the Hawks to an eight point lead with two minutes left, and try as they might, Sydney just couldn’t recover.
Khazzouh was brilliant for the Kings with 24 points on 9 of 11 shooting from the field, and Coach Robilliard once again paid tribute to his star big man.
“Teams are going to work out very quickly how important Julian is to our team”, he said.
“Because we’ve had guys out, we haven’t been able to put different things in for him to enable us to move him around and exploit his skills in other areas”.
“Once we do that, he’ll give us another dimension and we’ll be that much better for it”.
Grizzard, who is struggling with a slight back injury, nonetheless displayed his full range of skills with a 21 point, four rebound, three assist, three steal contribution, while both Madgen and McCullough had 11 for Sydney.
Coenraad finished with a game-high 31 points, five rebounds and three steals for the victors, while Gruber was tireless in producing 19 points and nine rebounds and Demos contributed an important 12 points.
Sydney shot a creditable 51% from the field including a blistering 59% in the second half compared to Wollongong’s 49% return, but the Hawks won the battle of the boards 41-32 and that was a key in the outcome.
The Kings’ next game is Friday night in Terrigal when they will come up against an All Star team put together by Sydney Kings’ legend Steve ‘Mr Magic’ Carfino.
