SPORT Lightning looking flash
BELIEF goes a long way. And Lightning suddenly has it in spades.
Darwin basketball’s Challenge season champions entered the Championship season title race with a 110-63 demolition of previously unbeaten Ansett on Friday night.
Ansett went into battle without coach Paul Rowse – who is in the Hunter Valley with the Darwin Cyclones – and stars Matthew Hunt and Brad Davis.
It also didn’t help that American import Jerron Jamerson managed a modest 16 points, half of his next-lowest tally this season.
Craig Martin (39 points) and Austin Kisselev (32) were monsters at the offensive end for Lightning, but coach Chris Charman said his men produced the ultimate team performance.
“We just turned up to play. We said in the warm-up we were going to win,” Charman said. “I was hit up by the Eagles coach (Donna Hurst) before the game and she wished us good luck and I said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll win this’.
“I don’t know what it was, but when our confidence is up, we’re pretty hard to stop.
“We attacked the ring hard and went hell for leather – we let nobody get in our way, and if they did we went over them, through them or under them.”
Dylan De Santis (10) was the other double-digit Lightning scorer and, along with fellow swingman Cameron Bailey, helped disrupt Ansett’s high-octane offence.
They forced Ansett to repeatedly shoot from long range, with Mitch O’Donoghue (12) and Freddy Webb (11) combining for seven threes, and the strategy worked.
“I noticed a lot of other teams watching from the start and they may take our tactics in next time they play them,” Charman said.
“We’ve definitely turned our season around. We weren’t struggling, but we were up and down and not as consistent as we wanted to be.
“There will be a few thoughts in other teams that (Ansett) are beatable.”
Eagles farewelled Reece Turner with a 90-78 defeat of a five-man TV Jets.
Turner is relocating to South Australia to be the Adel- aide 36ers’ community engagement manager.
He scored 13 points as Alex Fertig (37) and Joe Johnson (29) consigned the Jets to a fifth straight loss. Joel Stevens and Jackson Tremlett led the Jets with 19 each.
Reed Ridder’s 44-point outing was not quite enough to inspire Razzle to victory over Palmerston, who got away with a 94-85 success.
Shaq Hohipa-Wilson had 23 points for the Power.