Whangarei basketball fans witnessed a rare thriller on Saturday afternoon as the match between Raumanga Royals and City Hawks went into double overtime to find a winner.
Unfortunately for the Hawks, it was the Royals who found that little bit extra to end the protracted deadlock at Kensington Stadium with the
match finally finishing 102-99.
"It was the best game of the season - perhaps the best game of basketball Kensington Stadium has seen in about 10 years - it was awesome and it had the entire crowd out of their seats," Hawks spokesman Travis McIlroy said afterwards.
The match was locked up at 73-all at full time after a late surge by the Royals, after the Hawks had led for most of the match. McIlroy top-scored in the match with 38 points, with Kane Rudolf adding 21 points to the cause. For Raumanga, it was Cory TeTai who scored 35, with captain Beau Mackey the next best with 15 points but McIlroy said that Kyron Wihongi-Henare that came to the fore during overtime.
"He's becoming known as a specialist when games are really tight - he's even earned the nickname Mr Clutch - and he made all the difference on Saturday when the game went into overtime, he really stepped up," he said.
The first game of the weekend - on Friday night - was another tight affair as Portland broke a two game losing streak to overcome a good effort by Maunu Lights, finally beating them 107-84.
The match was anything but straightforward however, with Maunu the better team in the first spell and leading 51-44 at the half-time break.
But in the third-quarter Maunu ran into foul trouble and started the fourth quarter with two of their best players, Josh Martinac and Justin Friedrich, watching from the bench after being fouled out.
Portland took advantage of their absence to overtake the Lights and they didn't let up the pressure to win comfortably at the final whistle.
Walter Smith top-scored for Portland with 37 and Hayden Bird scored 19, with Martinec still top-scoring for Maunu with 26.
The competition's final game was postponed with Kaikohe Cougars unable to make it through to Whangarei to play Kamo Stars on Saturday.
