Huskies’ thrilling start
JET-LAGGED, far from home, on debut, a new group, and trailing all night — yet the Southern Huskies somehow found victory in their historic first-up appearance in the New Zealand NBL.
The Huskies trailed by as much as 13 points during the third term last night but dug deep to secure a thrilling 100-99 victory over the Manawatu Jets in New Zealand.
On the back of the Huskies “big three” — Tre Nichols (30 points, five rebounds, five assists), Craig Moller (27 points and 17 rebounds) and Jalen Billups (26 points) — and some energy off the bench from BJ Ratcliffe and Tiri Masunda, the first Australian team to compete in a major NZ domestic league prevailed. An exhausted Huskies coach Anthony Stewart said relief was the overwhelming emotion.
“The two days’ travel we could have used as an excuse, but the players dug in and worked really hard,” Stewart said. “I was really impressed with Tiri and BJ to come up and change the momentum of the game.
“It is not easy after travelling for 28 hours and being in transit through delays and things like that.
“It was always going to be tight but we knew we had to [win] that game and we snuck home luckily.”
The Jets had a chance to level the scores in the final minute, but import Kuren Iverson, a cousin of NBA great Allen Iverson, missed one of his three free throws to allow the Huskies to retain the narrowest of leads and cling on to the historic win.
The Huskies are in action again today against NZ NBL title favourites the Wellington Saints and on Sunday against the Hawke’s Bay Hawks.