Raffles Institution vs Dunman High School (90-38)

Raffles Institution vs Dunman High School (90-38)



This would be the 2nd last friendly game that we would play in the year. The game was held at the sheltered courts at the JC side.

As soon as the ball went up and the game started, we were ready to play. Our goal was to start off the game strong and break their confidence from the very first quarter so that they would lose the will to continue to fight and give up fast. That was exactly what we did. Our point guard Daran set the tone of the game right at the start as he scored 8 straight points to put us up 8-0 in the opening mins. He was perfect during the run going 3/3 from the field including 2/2 from 3pt range. The rest of the team eventually fed off his energy and we started to pick up our own game as well. We ran hard on the fastbreak and did not allow many easy layups for the opponents. This resulted in us going up 29-4 by the end of the first quarter.

The following 3 quarters were more of the same as we continued to stretch the lead slowly but surely by forcing many turnovers from our opponents while at the same time taking care of the ball reasonably when we were on offense. This resulted in us eventually blowing the game wide open, eventually winning the game by a margin of 52 points.

One player that played well this game was one of our posts Yang Gan, who contributed significantly when he was on the court playing. He ended up with 5 strong rebounds and made many good passes as he came up with 3 assists while only turning the ball over once.



Improvements

Although we played pretty well in this game, we still have some areas that we can improve on. One of them would be our fouling. Although not many fouls were called for both teams in this game, we tend to get too aggressive with our defense, bumping the opponents unnecessarily while trying to go for the steal. This specifically happens when we are doing our full court presses. Though these fouls were not called in this game, when the season starts, the referees may call these kind of fouls on us. So we have to be careful not to foul unnecessarily and let them get into the penalty early in the game, giving them free throws.

Next, running back on defense. Although they did not score much in this game, many of the points that they scored were on fastbreak layups. This was partly due to the lack of effort on our part to run back quickly in order to stop the fastbreak. We have to dash back on defense every possession. Though it did not hurt us in this game, we definitely cannot let this become a habit.



Strengths

We were efficient from the field in this game as we were able to go 26/49 in our 2pt attempts (53%). But more importantly, we were efficient from 3pt range in this game as well scoring 12/29 (41%) which is a big improvement from the percentage that we had been shooting the previous games. We must keep this up as it can serve as a huge weapon for us come season time.

Also, we were once again strong on the boards, getting a total of 37 rebounds (16 off, 21 def). We have been doing this pretty consistently throughout all the games that we had played and this has limited the 2nd chance opportunities of our opponents while increasing our own 2nd chance opportunities.

Most of all, the biggest strength that we had in this game was that we only had 15 turnovers, while getting a stellar 28 steals. This was probably the biggest reason why we were able to blow this game wide open as we were taking good care of the ball on the offensive end, while forcing many turnovers on the defensive end. This resulted in us getting more possessions and naturally, more scores.



We will be playing our last friendly game of the year on Thursday. The game once again will be held at the RJC courts. Stay tuned.