PATTON SHOWS THE WAY
THE man that gave them the name is gone and they have a few new faces but the Taipans’ “Blue Baggers” are still punching on.
Last season the Snakes bench of Jarrad Weeks, Mitch McCarron, Stephen Weigh, Alex Loughton and Nnanna Egwu led the league in the plusminus statistic, which is a calculation of points scored by this group minus points allowed.
They were dubbed the “Blue Baggers” by former assistant coach Gordie McLeod as they wore the blue singlets in training instead of the starters’ orange.
They have lost McCarron, Loughton and Egwu to the starting unit but the new bench boys, now led by Chris Patton, Jerry Evans Jr and Damon Heuir kept the Blue Baggers spirit alive on Saturday night.
Patton (10 points), Weeks (10), Heuir (nine) and Evans Jr (10) picked up the scoring slack as the Snakes’ bench outscored United’s by 30 in the 79-70 win to bring their season record to 7-7 and move into the top four.
“They keep finding ways to win,” United coach Dean Vickerman said after the game.
“Their bench absolutely killed us. Those 39 points of the bench for them tonight, you know, Weeksy, Jerry Evans and all of them with Heuir. They all came in and had a fantastic impact.”
United have arguably the most talented NBL squad but were beaten by two players they overlooked on Saturday night.
Cairns’ injury replacement Evans Jr trained with United over the off-season while Patton was a United player a few seasons ago, with the cashedup Melbourne deciding against signing the duo.
“Jerry is a good kid and we really enjoyed having him around our program,” Vickerman said. “He has shown he is an NBL player.”
With centre Egwu sitting down with early foul trouble, the Snakes got a spark of energy from Patton who had four buckets in the first half.
The injury replacement for Nate Jawai, Patton, put in his best shift in orange, with 10 points and three rebounds.
“We’re down some key guys from a scoring perspective and we’ve got to win games by defending and rebounding and trying to get out in transition and trying to get some easy buckets,” Snakes coach Aaron Fearne said.
“We’re defending really well right now.”
Power forward Tai Wesley kept United in the game in the first half as Chris Goulding and Casey Prather failed to fire, landing 17 points in the opening two quarters with three triples.
Cairns host the Brisbane Bullets on Thursday.