Storm’s first loss
Island team blows halftime lead to Moncton Miracles.
The Island Storm blew a 13- point halftime lead Thursday in losing its first game of the National Basketball League of Canada season.
The Storm went to the break with a 52- 39 lead but were outscored by 15 in the third quarter. The teams traded the lead in the fourth, but the Storm was unable to pull out the victory in front of 1,660 fans at Eastlink Centre.
“It was a tough loss, but we deserved every bit of it,” said coach Joe Salerno. “We played very poorly in the second half.”
He said the team stopped moving the basketball, being aggresive and didn’t execute the game plan.
“We better learn something from that,” he said. “We need to learn that anybody in this league can beat anybody on any given night.”
The loss came after a 120- 91 win over the Miracles Sunday in Moncton.
“We didn’t make shots like we did in the first game against them,” said point guard Al Stewart, who had six points, 10 dimes and two boards.
Trailing 95- 94 with 12.8 seconds to go Stewart was called for a travel. Stewart said he was fouled and the ball hit the ground and he recovered it, but it was not a travel.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s bad to lose that way,” he said.
Moncton guard Johnny Mayhane was fouled on the next play and hit two free throws to give the vistors a three- point lead with 5.9 seconds on the clock.
Shooting guard Shawn Vanzant tried to bank in a deep three at the buzzer with a couple guys in his face, but couldn’t get it to drop.
“It was a very difficult shot. I was hoping for the best,” he said.
“We just have to tighten some things up on defence. They got a lot of wide- open threes and they were knocking them in,” Vanzant added.
“( We’ll) go back to the drawing board at practice and figure out what we did wrong and try to get better.”
The score was fairly close for most of the first half with the Storm closing the second quarter on an 8- 0 run to take a 13- point lead into halftime.
The Miracles went on a 12- 5 run in the first 4: 28 of the third quarter, cutting the lead to six and resulting in a Storm timeout.
Dominique Buckley was a big reason for the comeback, scoring 27 and was 6- for- 11 from downtown.
Antonio Ballard had a double- double with 20 points and 12 rebounds while Antoine Tisby added 19 points for the Storm.
“We need to take our lumps from this one and understand what we didn’t do tonight and try to be better on Sunday,” Salerno said.
The Storm host the Saint John Mill Rats Sunday at 4 p. m.