Sydney Dethroned at the Kingdome

The Melbourne Tigers campaign to end the Sydney Kings chances of an unprecedented ‘fourpeat’ got off to the perfect start with the Victorian side scoring a powerful 100-93 victory in game one of the AXA grand final series tonight at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

Game one of the best of five series looked set to be a classic when only two points separated the sides in a see sawing first half battle, but a 12-0 run by the Tigers to open the second stanza handed them a comfortable lead they would never relinquish to give them the ascendancy in the best of five series.

“Anytime in a series you want to win the first game to get the upper hand,” said Tigers coach Al Westover.

“Winning this game is huge and winning it here where they have been nearly unbeatable makes me really proud of the guys.”

Sydney were able to cover for their short comings in the first half courtesy of some timely shooting, but after the main break Melbourne’s big men took over dominating the rebounding count (54-33), which in turn led to a domination of the scoreboard.

”You look at the rebounding and that was obviously an issue,” said Sydney coach Brian Goorjian.

“To me the rebounding stems from the shooting and that stems from getting behind in the third quarter and panicking. We took bad shots under pressure and that was our demise.”

Once again Tigers centre Chris Anstey was the stumbling block for the Kings with the big man dominating the match with 24 points and 12 rebounds, but he was not the only one to give Sydney headaches as swingman Dave Thomas poured in 23 points on 9/15 shooting.

Kings import Sedric Webber had on of his best games in a Sydney uniform scoring 23 points courtesy of five three pointers and he was ably assisted by his captain Jason Smith who toiled away all night long for his 20 points.

With the cheers of 5,890 Kings fans ringing in their ears Sydney looked pumped up heading out on to the court for the opening tip off and this adrenaline was quickly turned into points as the home side raced to an early 11-6 lead.

The Kings sustained their hard nose play and when Webber landed his first three pointer of the game Sydney had their largest lead of the game (22-15), but in the final two minutes of the period that advantage was quickly eroded courtesy of some Anstey magic that saw the Tigers head into quarter time three points down (25-22).

Melbourne’s surge continued into the second term with Stephen Hoare nailing consecutive long bombs to put the visitors ahead 26-25 and from that point on neither team was able to impose themselves on the contest with only an acrobatic buzzer beating lay up from Thomas separating the sides at half time (51-49).

Sydney’s inability to contain the Tigers big men hurt them badly in the moments after the main break with the visitors going on a 12-0 run before CJ Bruton finally got the Kings on the scoreboard in the second half with an uncontested lay up (63-51).

The Kings got as close as nine points on two occasions over the final six minutes of the period, but every time the defending champs looked to make a run it was quickly repelled by the more physical Tigers outfit (79-66).

The big home crowd tried to lift their team back into the game early in the final term, but Melbourne would have none of it shutting down Sydney until a late three point barrage from the home side put some respectability into the score line.

Game two of the grand final series will take place on Sunday night at Melbourne’s State Netball and Hockey centre.

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