Got to my first ABL game of the season (Pasadena is back!) to watch the hilariously undermanned Sabres take on Forestville. No D.Ng, no Dodman, no Todd Smythe, no Hakkas, not even Liam Flynn and Todd Gower present. They started, from memory, M.Ng, Mark Bauer, Paget, Palmer and then, besides Vaughno, had no one else I recognised on their roster. Was the other starter Simmons?
Yet what was amazing is that they led for part of the game and made it a contest. Hit some threes late to make the Eagles work for it. Very scrappy game though.
The performance from these young newcomers was quite amazing - Paget had a double-double up against Kane Oakley after barely getting a run last year. Marcus Ng went off for 30 at 56%, plus 7 boards and 6 assists, playing through what looked like cramps.
The guys I'd not seen play before that seemed to do pretty well were Mitch Simmons and Andrew Braham (12 pts) going by the boxscore.
Oakley had 11 and 19 with 5 blocks but should've dominated the scoring against Paget and Palmer inside, instead of going 5/19 FG in front of Steve Breheny. Sutton was pretty poor (2/12 FG) from the field too.
As forum regular, BenFitz, said - if you had a basketball newcomer watching that game and asked them to pick the two guys that played reasonable minutes at a higher level last year, I don't know that they could've done it.
Spotted at the game, Newley, Dix, Breheny, etc.