Breakers 82
Wildcats 79
The Breakers won't have it all their own way in the ANBL playoffs. Last night's dramatic victory over arch-rivals Perth Wildcats showed that.
With Dillon Boucher and Corey Webster sidelined, the Breakers were smashed to pieces on the boards, choked offensively down the stretch and battled a poor officiating display by the three Australian referees.
That they won says plenty about this side's ability to get the job done, but last night showed they are far from the distance ahead of the field their ladder standing suggests.
Two Kirk Penney free-throws got the Breakers home and earned a measure of revenge for the 40-point drubbing they received when these teams last met in Perth. But the match will have done little to discourage the defending champions as they look to rebuild following the season loss of key scorer Shawn Redhage.
The Wildcats have a formula for troubling the Breakers and they are unlikely to deviate from it. Other sides, if they can muster tall enough personnel, will look to copy it.
Penney's free throws with 4.7 seconds left were the first Breakers points since CJ Bruton knocked down a pair of free-throws with 2mins 46sec remaining. That scoreless stretch - with Wilkinson, Penney and Kevin Braswell all missing shots - should have been their undoing. Instead they somehow clung on for a 17th win in their 20th outing.
A two-match series against the desperate Blaze that starts on Sunday on the Gold Coast and concludes in Auckland on Wednesday night will provide another stern test.
For now they will just be relieved to have kept their unbeaten record in 2011 alive.
The Breakers had the measure of the Wildcats' interior defence in the early exchanges, with 14 of their first 18 points coming from inside the paint.
Boucher's stand-in, BJ Anthony, made an instant impression, scoring a simple lay-up with his first touch from a laser-like Braswell pass, as the Breakers eased to a five-point lead.
The Wildcats quickly erased that deficit and only another Anthony bucket on the buzzer gave the Breakers a quarter-time lead.
The Wildcats benefited from a home-away-from-home refereeing display from the Australian officials, who appeared unable to apply the same level of scrutiny to both sides' play. There was a string of questionable penalties and 50-50 calls in Perth's favour that defied mathematical probability. This disrupted the Breakers' momentum and displeased the Auckland crowd, with Perth hitting the front for the first time early in the second quarter.
Their lead was short-lived, though, with a run of seven straight points from Tom Abercrombie putting the Breakers in front.
At halftime they led by just four, and were getting smashed on the boards to the tune of 25 rebounds to 15.
The recipe for an upset was on hand, but this Breakers team has mastered the art of closing out games this season - even when they don't deserve to.
