ANOTHER GEAR?
That’s right. The champs could get better still.
At least that’s what assistant coach Derek Browne believes, having reasoned Lumber Company LSC are yet to fire on all cylinders after committing too many turnovers in the Co-operators General Insurance Premier League basketball finals opener against Pinelands.
Browne expressed the sentiment despite watching his team rebound from two regular season losses to the Pine to take last Saturday’s Game 1 71-69.
“We can still play a lot better because we turned over the ball 20 times in Game 1 and that’s giving them too many extra possessions and easy opportunities to score,” said Browne, a former championship-winning point guard for the team.
“If you look at the analysis from the first two [regular season] games against them, we averaged something like 21 turnovers and gave up 17 offensive rebounds, so we controlled the boards a lot better but we still had too many turnovers that kept them in the game.
Game 2 of the best-of-five series is scheduled for tomorrow at the Barbados Community College.
“Going forward we need to work on that because our defence is holding up as they aren’t shooting that well against us, and those extra possessions and easy scoring opportunities will eventually come back to haunt us,” he added.
It’s been a clear point of emphasis for a traditionally well-disciplined offensive unit that clearly struggled against the Pine’s plan to aggressively hedge and trap their on-ball picks.
The result was a pair of stunning regular-season defeats, as LSC coughed up the ball around 21 times per contest against Pinelands while also failing to keep that opposing star-studded frontcourt off the offensive glass.
Such was the Pine’s domination of those two games that many pundits even wrote off the champs heading into a finals rematch that LSC swept in three straight games a year ago.
But the Husbands men were the ones doing the front-running this time, having led Game 1 by double digits in both the second and third quarters after limiting Pinelands to just nine offensive boards.
“It’s those easy opportunities and second chance points that we were giving up, so we had to make some adjustments to control the glass because they really aren’t shooting that well against us,” said Browne.
“We also made some adjustments to how they were playing us with the hard trapping of the screen and rolls but we’re still committing some turnovers in certain situations.”
Now Pinelands will have to search for answers of their own, especially after prolific combo guard Jeremy Gill was held to just ten shots while Junior Moore and Halley Franklyn went a combined four of 13 from the field.
And they’ll more than have enough time to make those adjustments too, with the finals currently in the midst of a five-day layoff.
• justinmarville@nationnews.com
