A couple of nice wins for Round 17 for the Storm on the weekend.
Championship Men
Saturday
Bellarine 70 lost to McKinnon 106
(Max Kos 22, Lewie Varley 17)
Sunday
Bellarine 84 lost to Melbourne University 91
(Lewie Varley 24, Seb Thomason 20)
Things were looking good for our Champ Men on Saturday night, as they were right with McKinnon for the first term as Max Kos went into overdrive, scoring 11 points for the term.
However, the second term was a much different story as the visitors put their pedal to the metal and left the Storm in their rear view mirror, outscoring us 27 to 11 for the term to have a big 19 point buffer at the half.
In a real Jekyll and Hyde game, the third term was another closely fought contest, with Lewie Varley, Bryce Cashman, Max Kos and Nathan Gronbeck trying to do the heavy lifting to get the Storm back into the game, however, they couldn’t stem the flow at the opposite end of the court, facing a 23 point canyon with one to play.
Once again in the final term, the Storm didn’t have any answers for McKinnon as they eventually ran out 36 point winners.
Despite the final result, there was an awful lot to like about Sunday’s game as the Storm dug deep after the previous nights contest and served it right up to Melbourne Uni who had to work really hard to escape with a 7 point win.
Max Kos took up form where he left off the previous night and had the Storm’s opening 8 points of the game, before Lewie Varley began to make his presence felt and Bryce Cashman was providing Melbourne Uni a few headaches under the basket at both ends.
Like the previous night, it was a close and hard fought opening term, with the visitors only managing a 2 point break by quarter time. But unlike the previous night, the second term turned into a real arm wrestle as scoring dried up for both teams and the visitors went to the main break only adding one point to their quarter time lead.
As you’d expect from a team sitting in the top half of the competition, Melbourne Uni began to make their move in the third as their outside shooters went to work with a barrage of threes for the term.
Despite a 10 point margin at the final break, you still felt the Storm were in with a massive chance of causing the boiler and there were several times in the term, where we got close enough to get the visitors worried.
The last term belonged to Seb Thomason who scored 11 of his 20 points in the final term and was almost carrying the team on his shoulders to the finish line.
However, the Storm just couldn’t manage to get their nose in front, going down by 7 points in a very entertaining contest.
Division 1 Women
Bellarine 79 defeated Melbourne University 59
(Georgia Varley 22, Olivia Virt 19)
Our Division 1 Women had a strong win against Melbourne Uni on Sunday afternoon and have set up a Home final against Mildura in the opening week of Finals this weekend.
The Storm looked impressive in this game as the looked to fine tune their finals game in this one.
After setting up a 7 point lead at quarter time, the Storm went into ‘beast mode’ as they completely outplayed Melbourne Uni to have a 32 to 13 second quarter and all but shut the game down.
Jaimee Crombie kick started the onslaught, having the Storms first eight points of the term before anyone could blink an eye. The great news for the Storm was that there was such an even spread of scoring across the term, with Olivia Virt, Georgia Varley, Chantelle Hall, Alivia Osborne and Charlotte Armstrong joining in the scoring party.
To Melbourne Uni’s credit, they came out in the third term and set about trying to limit the damage and managed to dry up the Storm’s scoring potency, whilst finding some scoreboard action of their own.
However, the damage had already been done and the Storm were able to press their advantage to run out 20 point winners and show that they will be a real handful in this years Finals series.
Youth League 2 Men
Bellarine 77 defeated Warrandyte 74
(Mitch Smith 19, Sam Maher 16)
The good news story of the weekend was our Youth League Men having a win in their last game of the season by 3 points on the road at Warrandyte.
It’s been a season of hard work by this new look squad in 2023 and wins have been difficult to achieve across the season, so it was a great result to boost their confidence going into next season.
The Storm were out of the starting blocks early, having the first 8 points of the night, before the home side could bother the scorers.
Mitch Smith and Sam Maher were leading the way for the Storm, with Jack Davies coming into the game off the bench and exerting his presence on the contes both on the glass and on the scoreboard.
The Jack factor continued into the second term as the young big man was providing a real presence on court for his side and instrumental in setting up the 8 point half time lead.
The danger for the Storm is that on a number of occasions this season, they’ve managed to pull out a quiet term that lets the opposition back into the contest and in some cases, take control of the contest.
However, Saturday night was not one of those nights and when the contest tightened up in the third, the Storm were able to hold their own and maintain the lead into the final change.
As expected, the home side mounted a late run at the finish line, getting to within two points with three and a half to play in the final quarter, before the scoring dried up for Warrandyte, going 1 of 9 down the stretch and allowing the Storm to hold on courtesy of several trips to the free throw line, to hold on by three points in the end.
To Coach Nick Stamatopoulos, Assistant Coaches Baden Giblett and Christian Sanderson, Team manager Michelle Giblett and the Youth League Men’s squad, thank you for your efforts this season. We’ve all enjoyed watching your development across the 2023 season and we look forward to 2024!
Youth League Women
BYE