Playmaker Jaron Rillie appears to have reaggravated his troublesome right hamstring and veteran Jesse Wagstaff injured his left hand, souring Perth’s otherwise impressive 107-97 NBL win over South East Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Dylan Windler paired 27 points with eight rebounds at Melbourne’s State Basketball Centre on Saturday night, while fellow American Kristian Doolittle posted 24 points — including 14-of-18 free throws — and 12 boards.<\/p>\n
Elijah Pepper caught alight from the perimeter, bombing 4-of-6 threes in his 18-point haul.<\/p>\n
“Playing a good team, there’s ebbs and flows, emotion, good energy in the building,” Wildcats John Rillie said.<\/p>\n
Dylan Windler in action for the Wildcats.\u00a0Photo by Kelly Defina\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
“It was good for us to stick with it and find a way to get it done down the stretch.”<\/p>\n
But the road-warrior Wildcats’ victory — their 10th from 14 away games, contrasting a 4-6 home record — was dimmed when Jaron Rillie and Wagstaff exited the contest within 26 seconds of each other in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Rillie’s injury — on top of import David Duke Jr’s long-term elbow injury — is a significant blow, leaving Perth without a recognised point guard.<\/p>\n
Wes Iwundu scored 27 points for the second-ranked but off-colour Phoenix, while Nathan Sobey had 24 points and eight assists.<\/p>\n
SEM opened up a 26-22 lead before the visitors finished the quarter with a 10-0 rush over the last 2:04 to lead 32-26 at the first break.<\/p>\n
The Phoenix knocked down 6-of-11 from three-point range in the first term and out-rebounded the Wildcats 12-7.<\/p>\n
play<\/p>\n
0:14<\/p>\n
Ben Henshall throws down a monster jam<\/p>\n
Ben Henshall powers through the lane for an emphatic finish at the rim.<\/p>\n
But the home side came wildly undone through turnovers, coughing up eight of them for the period.<\/p>\n
Ben Henshall’s lightning hands played a huge part in SEM’s ball-handling woes, Perth’s swingman on world record pace with four first-quarter steals.<\/p>\n
Pepper and Doolittle took advantage of some uncharacteristically vapid Phoenix defence to stretch the Wildcats’ cushion to 54-42, before Iwundu paced a strong SEM rally to slice the gap to 58-50 at halftime.<\/p>\n
Sobey enjoyed a strong third term, while Perth’s turnovers began to mount, as the Phoenix briefly drew level at 75-75.<\/p>\n
The Wildcats gave themselves breathing space with a 9-0 run either side of three-quarter-time, enough of a break to keep SEM at arm’s length as Windler and Doolittle continued to prosper.<\/p>\n
“Very uncharacteristic from us on the offensive end turning the ball over, (giving them) easy opportunities,” Phoenix coach Josh King said.<\/p>\n
“Then defensively we just weren’t very good.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playmaker Jaron Rillie appears to have reaggravated his troublesome right hamstring and veteran Jesse Wagstaff injured his left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-404896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404896","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=404896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}