Things have finally clicked for the Northland Suns, who clinched their second consecutive win in the Super City Basketball Competition, comfortably beating Basketball Auckland, 95-75.
After going through the first round winless, the Suns had their first triumph in the competition last Saturday against Ngatiwai Soldiers, and to back it up
against a side such as Basketball Auckland one week later wa a tribute to how far the team has come in its debut season, chief executive Travis McIlroy said.
"Everything is finally starting to come together and fall into place for the Suns," he said.
In round one, the Suns lost to the Aces 112-96, in a game which the Northland team believed they could have won had it not been for Auckland's potent scorer Dylan Perfect-Tait.
Perfect-Tait scored a massive 48 points, including 14 three-pointers during that initial clash, on August 28.
"We went into this game with that in mind and we had him very much contained. We really took the round one loss to heart, so we remembered everything about how they played, we knew their offence just as well as they did, and we shut them down. We knew we had a good chance of winning if we could do that."
In huge contrast to their first encounter, Perfect-Tait was restricted to a meagre six points, with Mitch Knock, Arahi O'Donnell, McIlroy and Justin Friedrich making their presence felt heavily on defence.
"Our defence was amazing - our man to man defence was good ... they still managed to score 75 points, and they were mostly off loose rebounds," McIlroy said.
The Suns led from start to finish on Saturday, starting strongly, getting out to a 15-point early advantage. Basketball Auckland got within three points during the third spell, but the Suns held on, and blew out their lead in the fourth quarter to win by 20 points.
It has given the Suns a huge boost for the remaining games in the second round.
Kerikeri's Knock was the top scorer for a second week, shooting 27 points while McIlroy shot 25 and also had 11 assists.
