Inside Dominance Key to Game One Win - Buford

With the tall trio of Tim Soares, Xavier Cooks and Jordi Hunter – with Kouat Noi in support – the Sydney Kings are a beast of an offensive outfit in the paint.

While Hunter was restricted to just four minutes in last night’s win over Cairns, the Kings dominated their opposition inside to emerge with a hard-fought eight-point victory.

Cooks in particular was at his impressive best, and the MVP finished with 27 points and 14 rebounds for this third double-double against the Taipans this season. While Soares – foul trouble notwithstanding – was an effective inside influence on the offensive end.

“The thing that encourages me – 58-26 points in the paint,” Kings coach Chase Buford said post-game.

“That’s the way we want to win games. We give up threes but we dominate at the rim, and I think we can dominate everybody at the rim.”

On top of the massive difference in points in the paint, the Kings pulled in eight more rebounds than their opposition, leading to a positive margin of five points on second chance efforts.

After giving up 59 points in the first half Sydney tightened the screws on the Snakes to restrict them to just 10 points in the third quarter – and 28 for the half.

“To give up 60 points in a half is unacceptable for any team. It’s unbelievable,” Cooks said. “They came in and Antonio hit some crazy shots, but he’s a good shooter and we have to be locked in there.

“We watch a bit of film every halftime, and in the game you feel like you’re trying hard, but when you can see yourself bullsh*****g out there then it motivates you to take some pride out.

“We really slowed the pace down, we brought the energy and we figured it out.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">That’s the signature Xavier Cooks stare-down ?<br><br>Catch the second half live on ESPN via Kayo Freebies ? <a href="https://t.co/TTEMdKeNNc">pic.twitter.com/TTEMdKeNNc</a></p>&mdash; NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1625805747295768576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 15, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

When pulling together the scout for the clash, it’s highly likely Jonah Antonio wasn’t at the top of the list for the Kings’ defenders. After dropping 18 points in the first half though he looked a likely match-winner until Sydney slowed him down.

Antonio was restricted to just two points in the second half as Cairns’ offence faltered, but Buford believes the sparkplug guard should have been defended better from the tip-off.

“We just let Antonio go nuts,” he said. “He med shots, credit to him, but we could have guarded him a whole lot better than we did. It was a total energy shift [in the second half].

“They had Antonio come in and flame-torch us, but he’s still -4 [for the game]. He’s got to deliver that to make up for his deficiencies to play against us and it’ll be hard to replicate that performance.

“DJ Hogg took seven attempts from three – which is probably a little bit too much – but he only makes one. I thought we had a lot of really good contests on him and not allowing him to make a bunch of triples is important.

“Despite how nuts they went in the first half they still shot better than they did in the season in terms of their overall percentage on this game.

“That was these guys (Sydney) coming out and playing with a different mindset in the second half.”

Game 2 of the Playoff Series between Cairns and Sydney will be played on Friday at 7:30pm AEDT, live on ESPN via Kayo Freebies.