Sydney playing real hard in the 1st half - leading 48 to 44 and going pretty hard inside the paint. They are SOOOO long with Khazzouh, Grant and Iti along with Bose.

Points in the paint in the 1st half is 22-14.

Both of these teams are the first squads to be the full squads we will see during the season; everyone is available.

I've been impressed with Aaron Bruce and Kevin Ratsch for Sydney along with Khazzouh and Bose, but the first 2 are a bit of a surprise with their play.

For the Breakers, Wilkinson has left off where he finished last year and Jackson looks to be a pretty lively and smart PG for them.

Aaron "Bryce's" 0-4 shooting, 2 assist and 1 steal so far impress's you?

yeah he's controlled the game and led the team around very well - there is more than just a stats sheet

THANKS!

That game turned real shit, real quick!

The Breakers were a shell of the team that held up the flag last season, going down 94 to 74. Give all credit to the Kings though, they played hard and point points on the board.

I was really impressed with Sydney's new recruits, Grant, Bruce, Gynes, Ratzsch and to a smaller extent, Iti. The Kings still have Madgen and Dann to come back so things are looking good for them. Jerai Grant played very well racking up 22pts and 5 rebs in 25mins... his post moves and touch under the basket are pretty good and he is so long on defense! In fact, Sydney are very long as a group, Khazzouh, Grant, Iti, Bose all long dudes.

Sydney had 5 in double figures and Anatoly Bose had 9 but he tweaked an ankle midway through the 3rd Qtr and did not play any further part in the game.

Sydney did struggle a bit to beat the Breakers full court man defense, especially Cooper who got stripped by CJ Jackson for 3 steals in the back court. I thought Aaron Bruce did a great job of leading the team around, finding open players and controlling the game. Gynes and Ratzsch are a 1-2 punch of hard working, hustle & muscle - they play hard!

Jackson and Gary Wilkinson were the only shinging lights on offense for NZ, Benny Anthony tried hard but CJ and Boucher looked disinterested at times. IMO Thomas Abercrombie is not ready for the next step (ironically he walking in while I wrote that).

The Breakers had 5 fouls 3mins into the 4th and it got uglier and uglier from there!

Comparing this to the team that won their fair share of games without Penney at the start of last season, perhaps it's just some of their players (I think DJ Rod mentioned in his blog that CJ and Boucher looked disinterested and we all know that CJ is capable of turning a game when he wants to) not really taking it seriously, as the only player change would be Jackson for Brasswell, otherwise it's pretty much the same team? They were running with 11 players as well...

Hopefully the Kings are starting to gel as they have some young but talented players - I think both fans and detractors both forget that they have 5 players on their team that haven't played NBL before, out of those, 2 are fresh from college and another player that's only played 4 games, so with the influx of new players, hopefully they can click sooner rather than later and get things rolling...