Saturday night saw the Norwood Flames men travel to St. Clair to visit the Woodville Warriors in their first matchup of the season. This fixture saw the hosts take their first meeting of the year by 22-points.

Norwood opened the game with the first basket and was their only lead for the opening term as the Warriors began strong. Woodville raced out of the gate with a 9-2 lead after conceding the first points. Norwood struggled to control their fouls in the first term as they were in foul trouble early into the quarter.

With Norwood being 7-points shy of a tie, Jerrell Sanders cut that to 5 with an emphatic and clean dunk with 4:20 remaining. This was one of his two dunks of the evening with the 2^nd coming moments later after a behind the back pass by Daniel Webber.

After a series of mistakes by Woodville and a vocal coach Whitmore, scores were level at 12 and he turned to his bench to change this. With hard and physical basketball on display, the Warriors ended the first term up 5 (21-16).

Flames frustrations continued into the opening quarter as the bench did not agree with a call and let the official know about it. This didn’t stop the Warriors momentum as they continued to flourish offensively and it being rewarded on the scoreboard.

To add to Norwood’s woes for the evening, they oddly shot poorly from beyond the arc and were getting dominated in their defensive paint too. Norwood finished the contest 9-29 from deep (31%) and conceded a total of 44-Points in the Paint overall.

Frustration looked to appear both between teammates occasionally and their opposition which set the stage for a physical second half. After Christopher Clausen’s put back was waived off at the buzzer, the Warriors were leading by a sturdy yet small 14-points.

The half time break didn’t seem to settle the emotions by Norwood as they turned the ball over on their first possession and conceded an offensive foul by Sanders soon after. As the game continued emotions began to fly which ended with a Technical Foul on Norwood’s Andrew Webber and Woodville’s possession.

By capitalising on their problems, the Warriors were able to construct a 20-point lead, which, included a 1-handed jam by Luke Stanbridge after the captain Adam Miller stole the ball.

Despite their shooting woes for the evening, the Flames ended the quarter with some consistency as their closing form from deep looked to give the hosts some trouble.

At the end of the third, the Warriors were up only 16. As the huddle tightened, Christopher Clausen expressed his thoughts out loud to his team regarding defence.  

With the game slowly coming to an end, the Flames had the final term to spark and rally a comeback victory. At times, the visitors looked to potentially be dangerous throughout although were unable to capitalise. Both coaches were vocal down the stretch letting their thoughts known.

The final siren came and Woodville were victors by 22-points and potentially set up a rivalry for the coming season.

 

Notable players:

Woodville:

Luke Stanbridge: 17-points, 3 rebounds, 1 assist and 20 +/-.

Daniel Carlin: 23-points, 8 rebounds, 1 assist and 15 +/-

Christopher Clausen: 14-points, 9 rebounds and 2 assists.

Norwood:

Jerrell Sanders: 17-points, 11 rebounds and 1 assist.

Benjamin Janssan: 15-points