Crusaders Chalk Up their Fourth Century!
The Crusaders set off
at a blistering pace on Saturday when the Neptunes came to the Coventry Sports Centre for
the first time.
Ed Baynes Clarke put
the first points on the scoreboard with an opening three pointer. Soon after his opening
shot, he made another one and that set the tone of the game.
There were to be
another eight three pointers from the home side and a phenomenal 14 three pointers
successfully made by the Neptunes during the course of the game.
The Crusaders branded
the game early on with their open court play.
Matt Collins who came
in off the bench, quickly showed the home crowd a great display of shooting, including 3
three pointers. By the end of the first quarter Collins had already accrued 13 points.
After the first few
minutes when the two teams were trading baskets – the Crusaders surged ahead, leaving
the Neptunes reeling as the Coventry side ended a highly entertaining first quarter up
35-17.
Neptunes worked hard
throughout the second quarter to try and cut the gap that never became more than 20
points. Larry Graves steady shooting and another three pointer from Derrick Pope
kept the Crusaders ahead.
The hard work of Rayn
Michalski for the Northampton team, however, could not be ignored. By half time he had
scored 14 points and helped the Neptunes outscore Crusaders for the quarter by 18 –21
points.
Scores at half time
(53-38) seemed to indicate that Crusaders would have an easy night and could reserve some
of their energy for Sunday’s away fixture to Liverpool, but this was not the case.
For Crusaders, Alaster
Spiers had an incredible third quarter – almost everything he touched resulted in
another basket, as Crusaders gave him the green light time and time again.
Northampton’s
Mike McLeod was warming up too and shot three of his seven three pointers in an attempt to
stay in touch with the Crusaders. The 13 points he contributed aided the Neptunes to
close the gap even more by again outscoring the Crusaders 22-25.
Spiers inspired play
and donation of 14 points aided his team in maintaining the lead, however, to 75-63 at the
end of the third quarter.
In the fourth quarter
all the supporters moved to the edge of their seat as Northampton continued to cut the
lead slowly until with just over 6:30 minutes left of the game there was only 5 points
between the two teams.
A nasty foul which hit
Larry Graves in the face seemed to have the opposite effect from immobilising him and his
motivation to pick up the pace seemed to translate itself to the rest of the Crusaders.
Then with over 4
minutes left Pope hit a big three pointer which put the Crusaders up by 10 again, and
shortly after that Graves followed suite with a three of his one.
Once again the
Neptunes came close to catching up with the Crusaders but just couldn’t out-gun them
on the night.
They resorted to
making quick fouls in order to stop the clock and regain possession of the ball. Graves,
who went to the line 8 times in the closing minutes successfully potted 6 of the free
throws, giving the Crusaders more breathing space and the final score 101-91.
Northampton shot well
from the outside and played hard to the end, but the Crusaders have a very deep squad and
that became more and more very evident as the game transpired.
Crusaders Scores:
Larry Graves 29,
Alaster Spiers 20, Matt Collins 19, Derrick Pope 16, Dip Donaldson 6, Ed Baynes Clarke 6,
Sam Spare 5
Northampton Neptunes:
Ben Knight 4, Mark
Gledhill 4, Greg Richards 8, Rayn Michalski 18, Mark Spatcher 22, Mike McLeod 25
