South East Melbourne have overcome a double-figure deficit and reignited their NBL campaign with an 87-81 win over an error-riddled New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Emerging star Owen Fowell (19 points, seven assists) shone for the Phoenix, who banked their first win at Auckland’s Spark Arena on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Captain Nathan Sobey (18 points) and American veteran John Brown III (13 points, five assists) were also influential.<\/p>\n
South East Melbourne had not played a league fixture in 17 days — owing to their exhibition clash with the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans — but showed few signs of rust across the ditch.<\/p>\n
Owen Foxwell dropped 19 points for the Phoenix.\u00a0Photo by Hannah Peters\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The result gave the Phoenix a 2-1 record to start their first full season under coach Josh King.<\/p>\n
“It feels great,” Foxwell told ESPN after the game.<\/p>\n
“The last two weeks have been really good for us as a group to gel together and get to know how we all want to play.<\/p>\n
“We faced a bit of adversity, so it was great to see us come out on top.”<\/p>\n
New Zealand led by 12 points at halftime, but produced a litany of errors and gave up 21 turnovers.<\/p>\n
It was the biggest tally of second-year coach Petteri Kopenen’s 35-game tenure.<\/p>\n
The Breakers (1-5) opened their account for 2025-26 with a big victory over Illawarra on Wednesday, but have not won consecutive games since round seven last season.<\/p>\n
Sobey’s nine first-quarter points gave the Phoenix a 21-15 buffer and the visitors didn’t trail until midway through the second period.<\/p>\n
The Breakers picked up the pace, led by Parker Jackson-Cartwright and Sam Mennenga, who cashed in with 15 first-half points.<\/p>\n
Phoenix forward DJ Mitchell was handed an unsportsmanlike foul over his tangle with Max Darling, and the Breakers opened up a 46-34 lead by the main break.<\/p>\n
Four consecutive Phoenix triples out of halftime, plus a series of defensive stops, quickly dragged the visitors back into the contest.<\/p>\n
Carlin Davison and Mennenga connected on an alley-oop to bring home fans to their feet.<\/p>\n
But the Phoenix were cleaner in the final period and outscored their opponents by 18 points in a dominant second half.<\/p>\n
Mennenga equalled his career-high score with 29 points and 11 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Jackson-Cartwright had 11 points and nine assists, but also coughed up a game-high six turnovers, while the Phoenix gave up just nine as a team.<\/p>\n
South East Melbourne are on the road again when they face Adelaide on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
The Breakers take on Tasmania (home) and Melbourne United (away) in round five.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South East Melbourne have overcome a double-figure deficit and reignited their NBL campaign with an 87-81 win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-208179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}