Saints notch up victory against Stirling
Craig Ritchie
St Mirren Senior Men notched up a victory in their first home game of the season as they took on Stirling Knights.
The visitors were a bit of an unknown quantity due to some new summer signings.
Saints saw the return of Dale Grieve, but illness found top scorer Nick Collins restricted to watching only.
Chris Cleary joined the starting lineup at The Lagoon after a strong performance last week in Fife.
The opening tip was lost and Saints spent the early minutes of the game chasing a very positive Stirling team.
Saints’ Luis Domingues found himself being left open and took full advantage as he made a baseline shot to keep Saints in contention at 9-4 down and in the next play down he made a three-pointer to close the gap to two points at 9-7.
The visitors made the next score and then Saints clicked into gear from 11-7 down to close out the quarter at 23-11. Cleary and Grieve’s three-pointers helped tot up the score.
The second period should have been more of the same. However, the visitors kept up the pressure and reversed the game on the Paisley side, taking the quarter 23-15 on the back of no less than 13 points from the free throw line.
A narrow lead at 38-34 found the Saints coaching staff making changes for the second half and Chris Barron and Dave Johnston led the way on the scoreboard.
Another 27 points to Saints had the visitors working harder than they wanted to as they could only add 15 points to their own tally.
This included a last shot three-pointer — the first of four long range shots in a row from three different players.
This was the start of the final period blitz that had the Saints digging deep to find victory.
The home team’s experience told in the end as they made a steady 18 points to keep in front of the barrage of long range attempts that Stirling resorted to in an effort to snatch the victory.
They scored no less than six threepointers in the last period to Saints’ one.
The final score at 83- 77 to Saints might suggest a much closer game than it actually was. However, Stirling’s never say die attitude and their hard work, which should see them climb the league this year, will surprise one or two teams.