By Jonty Ralphsmith
It’s grand final playoff time for the Pakenham Warriors men’s side.
In front of a full house, with the 611-seat grandstand overflowing with patrons, the Warriors wrapped up their best-of-three semi-final playoff series with an 11-point – 76-65 – win over Altona.
After hitting the road and defeating Altona last weekend, a commanding 22-7 first quarter set the tone for the match and proved the difference, with Altona narrowly winning the subsequent three-quarters.
The closest Altona got was within nine points early in the final stanza, but they never seriously challenged the Warriors who had plenty of contributors.
Canadian-import Joe Davis scored 28 points to go with nine rebounds, Alistair Parker got 16 points, eight rebounds and five steals, while Ned Weideman and Josh Dow each scored 13 points.
“We knew we needed to have a big start against them, they did that the first few times we played them during the season,” Warriors coach Rob Roberts said.
“Last week we gave them a big start, and we didn’t want to put ourselves under that pressure again, so we knew the start was going to be the most important thing for us and then we could look to play our game for the rest of it and that’s how it played out.
“It’s probably the first time all year we played four quarters of basketball.
“It was a low scoring game because defence is what Altona is known for, as well as us, so we produced exactly what we needed.”
Grand final opponent Gippsland present a different challenge, as a high-scoring team.
Gippsland has been held to fewer than 80 points just once, with nine of the 18 100-plus scores in the league being scored by Gippsland
When the sides first clashed – at Gippsland – Pakenham were a few players down because of Covid-19, going in with just seven players including a 14-year-old and 15-year-old, yet lost by just nine points.
Pakenham won the return clash – by five points in overtime.
“Last time we beat them at home both teams scored over 100 points, so they’re a very hard team to stop scoring, so that has got to be a focus for us being at our place,” Roberts said.
“Both teams are very strong offensively, I just hope our team can stem them a little bit and hold off their score.”
Game one of the three-game finals series takes place at Cardinia Life in Pakenham at 6pm this Saturday.
