Under 14 Boys compete hard again

Our BMBA Under 14 Boys Rep squad had another tough loss in their first season in A-grade competition at Dandenong Basketball Association. Having a similarly tough loss in their first game, our boys jumped out of the gates against the Kingston Academy team, leading 7-0 after four minutes; that margin could have been larger had the BMBA Boys made more of their opportunities. Despite this early lead the team was nowhere near its best, which allowed their Kingston opposition to work their way back into the game, tying the match at 9-9 at the ten-minute mark.

In the second half, those turnovers continued, allowing the Lingston opposition to get out to a 23-16 lead before our boys started to bring that back with a 10-3 run to get the margin back to just three points with five minutes to go. At this point, our boys made the same mistake as the week before and started pushing too hard for the win instead of staying within their structures that had reduced that lead. This had the boys making poor shot selection decisions and turnovers, which allowed Kinston to blow out the margin to finish with a 38-26 win.

Zach Chester was once again strong with 16 points, Tehan De Mel had 4 points, while Bill Pham, Kayden Ng and Lucas Edmonds all had 2 points each. To win games moving forward, the team will have to produce a more even scoring spread, have far fewer turnovers and improve their defence. With that much scope for improvement, it won’t be too long before losses will become wins at this level.

While disappointed with our performance, we also know we could have played better, and the positive out of our first two games is that the boys know their best is more than good enough, and that is what we will be working towards in our next match when we take on a Golden Hawks team at 3:30pm at Dandenong Stadium on Court 7. The Hawks play a full-court pressure defence, so our boys will need to bring their best game to defeat it.