Flames fire for Pirates
TOWNSVILLE Flames coach Shannon Seebohm has warned his team not to take the winless South West Metro Pirates lightly in their visit to STARFM Stadium tonight.
The Flames have started the NBL1 North season 2-0 with a home win over Ipswich before a road triumph in Darwin last round while the Pirates are still without a victory.
That stat mattered little to Seebohm who described South West Metro as a quality team that would provide a real danger game for his squad.
“Catherine Macgregor is a young talent from Brisbane who had 23 points last week for the Pirates and she’s really shown she can shoot the ball at a high level,” Seebohm said.
“They also have a great centre in Bride Kennedy-hopoate who is averaging around 20 points a game this season and they have two American imports who look pretty impressive.
“They are a pretty deep team with a number of players back from last season so they are going to be a very tough challenge and we’ll need to be pretty sharp defensively to beat them.”
The performances of Townsville Fire duo Courtney Woods and Steph Reid have been key to the Flames’ hot start to the season, with Woods the current NBL1 North player of the week after a 35-point showing in the win over Darwin. Woods’s 31.5 points per game lead the league and point guard Reid is the top assist getter with 7.5 per game but Seebohm stressed it had taken a team effort to start so strongly.
“We’ve obviously had some big performances from Steph and Courtney but we’ve also been getting contributions from a lot of other players and that’s been great to see,” he said.
“Everyone is kind of buying in to how we want to play, sharing the basketball, so far we’ve had a lot of positive signs and it’s a really exciting start to the year.”
The Townsville Heat are also a perfect 2-0 start to the season and will look to build from their fast finish in last week’s road win in Darwin when they host the Pirates men’s side tonight.
All five of the Heat’s starters managed double figures in scoring last round and they’ll be looking for another balanced scoring attack against a South West Metro team led by NBL stalwart and former Townsville Crocodiles development player Brendan Teys.
The Heat and Flames will back it up on Saturday night when they host the Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence teams in the NBL1 Wildcard Challenge.
The Centre of Excellence teams feature the top junior prospects from around the country, with Townsville vying to knock them off and win their way into the inaugural NBL1 National Finals, set to be held later this year.
The Flames game tips off at 6.30pm tonight, before the Heat game at 8.30pm, with tickets at https://www.trybooking.com/bxjoz.