Basketball: Auckland to host Nelson in knockout

Auckland will host Nelson in a knockout at the Trusts Stadium on Friday to find the opponent for Hawkes Bay in the national basketball league's trophy game after the Giants ended Waikato's run yesterday.

Captain Ed Book stood up for the home team as they won 77-65 at the Trafalgar Centre in Nelson, 10 points and 12 rebounds by halftime and 24/14 for the full 40 minutes.

The Titans were never in it, losing their way after a slow-scoring first quarter, down 24-34 by half time.

The Giants also enjoyed a good contribution from Breakers player Mika Vukona, the local input outplaying their imports in what is a good sign for the team's future.

American Greg Lewis top-scored for the Titans with 22. Tall Black Pero Cameron was confined to 12.

The result produces a repeat of last year's trophy game won by Auckland in Nelson. The Stars will fancy their chances of repeating that outcome.

In a quirk, the Giants lost 74-88 to Auckland in Nelson and won 79-70 in Auckland during the regular season.

The winners on Friday meet the Hawks the following Friday.

The Stars will need to play with more intensity than they did in losing their semifinal to Hawkes Bay last Friday, leaving coach Kenny Stone mystified over why his charges did not play with the energy and enthusiasm they produced in topping the table after the regular season.

"I can't take anything away from Hawkes Bay - they hit the shots they needed to," Stone said.

The Hawks delivered a 50 per cent accuracy rate, landing 33 off 66 field goals at Trusts Stadium. Auckland's success rate was 43 per cent, landing 32 of 74.

They downed 11 of 19 free throws, the Hawks shooting 18 of 27. The Hawks scored 17 points from turnovers compared with the Stars' 13.

The visitors' bench delivered 18 points, the home team bench 11.

Stone didn't think having six players in the Tall Black camp early in the week had affected them.

Tall Black Aaron Olson played more than three-quarters of the game despite breaking his big toe in that camp so should be a certainty for Friday's game.

Stone said the Stars had tried to adjust their defence to push the Hawks off their game plan and into into unfamiliar territory, but it didn't work for them.

"Maybe we need to keep it simple, maybe we tried to do too much defensively. We made some poor decisions, we had some poor shots."

Stone said the knowledge they had to win to make the final might be good for them against Nelson.

"Maybe we need to play under a bit of pressure."