FINALS OVER FOR GATLIN
THE Supercats’ title claims have been dealt a cruel blow, with star import DeMarcus Gatlin to have surgery today on a fractured foot, ruling him out of the rest of the campaign.
Gatlin, who has averaged 19.6 points a game and earned himself a spot in the AllSEABL second team of the year, injured his foot in last weekend’s elimination final victory over Sandringham.
Scans have revealed a Jones fracture in his fifth metatarsal which would normally rule him out for four to five weeks.
“It seems like a fairly routine procedure for him now — he’s just got to have a pin put in it and then it’s got to heal, but that will rule him out for the rest of the season,” Supercats chief executive Dean Anglin said.
“The surgeon said that if the finals started in four weeks’ time, he’d be playing finals.
“Four or five weeks, he’d be back in, so if it happened three weeks ago, he’d probably be back in for the All-SEABL final, if we made it.
“At the end of the day, he did it playing the game; he knows these things happen, injuries are something you’ve got to overcome.
“He’ll be out (of hospital) on Friday and I’ve got no doubt he’ll be at the game on Saturday.
“He’ll be as much part of the team as Nic Owusu has been all year sitting on the bench; he’ll be providing advice and options for the coaching staff and that’ll be his job now for the next few weeks.”
Gatlin isn’t exactly sure how the injury occurred, but it is believed he landed awkwardly in a lay-up.
“Even DeMarcus doesn’t actually know,” Anglin said.
“He thinks it happened (when) he went for a lay-up; as he went for the lay-up, somebody stood on the heel of his shoe and his shoe came off, and then as he landed, he thinks he landed on his foot, so it was fairly innocuous.
“None of us even saw it and we can’t find the vision of it to see what actually happened.
“He went back on the court for a little bit but the physios brought him off.”
While Anglin downplayed the loss of Gatlin to the men’s side, the guard is sure to leave a void. Last time the Supercats played Nunawading, in a 20- point win, Gatlin nailed a match-high 27 points.
It will be incumbent on veterans Nathan Herbert and Jamie Medved to fill the scoring hole left by Gatlin.
“He’s a scoring machine, there’s no doubt about it, but at the end of the day there’s a lot of scoring on that team,” Anglin said.
“We’re just going to need more production out of Jamie Medved, Kris Blicavs and Kristian Rocci. The positive for us is we selected 11 players at the start of the year and we’ve only played with 10, with Nic Owusu not making it on the court — the nine players we’ve got left are all very high-quality players.
“We still think we’re a shot. We think we match up very well against Nunawading.”
The Supercats face Nunawading away from home on Saturday night for a spot in the conference final against Mt Gambier.