B Division South Zone Round 2 Game 1: Raffles Institution vs St Andrews Secondary (56-38)

Raffles Institution vs St Andrews Secondary (56-38)


Points by Quarter:

               1st       2nd       3rd       4th
RI--------13------19-----13------11
SA--------7-------8-------7------16


The second round of the South Zone competitions started off with a game against St Andrews Secondary. We did not have much of a size advantage in this game as St Andrews had 4 big post players to match whatever height that we ourselves had to offer. However, we had scouted our opponents and were ready for whatever was coming.

With that being said, the game started off rather slow for both teams as both teams struggled to make baskets. For both teams, the majority of the points in the first quarter came from free throws, which slowed down the game a lot. However, we were still able to jump out to a 13-7 lead before closing the first.

The second quarter began and we started to find our groove as we got our hands on the passing lanes and were well prepared to stop their sideline and inbound plays from successfully working out. We forced many turnovers and got out on the break to get easy baskets to extend the lead. This saw us leading 32-15 at halftime.

In the 4th quarter however, we started to get a little complacent as we had done in previous matches and let our guard down as we started to commit almost half our total turnovers in the game in the 4th alone. This allowed the opponents to get easy layups on the other hand and boosted their morale by a little. However, it was too little too late as the lead that we had accumulated through 3 quarters was big enough to see us through the late run by St Andrews, allowing us to seal the game 56-38.



Improvements

We need to learn to box out more efficiently, especially when we are playing opponents that rely on one or two players to rebound or are bigger than us size wise. This game was a good lesson and reminder to us that we need to not only box out, but continue to push our opponents away from the basket after our box out to increase the amount of space we have to grab the rebound. In this game, we did not push after boxing out, resulting in the opponents tall post players grabbing the rebound, keeping the ball high and finishing.



Strengths

We were able to draw a lot of fouls in this game as we forced the opponents to commit 23 fouls while only getting 8 fouls ourselves. We also were able to get their key player #14 into quick foul trouble as he accumulated 3 fouls midway through the second quarter. We got them over the foul limit early and this allowed us to have many chances at the line, which we were able to convert on 24/35 of our free throw attempts. This is an encouraging sign from us and a weapon we can use for future games.



Our next game will be on Wednesday against Guang Yang Secondary followed by a Friday game against ACS (Barker Road) which should be an interesting game. Do stay tuned for more updates!