Kings embarrass Wildcats on home court

Saturday, 20 January 2018:

The Sydney Kings produced the biggest upset of the NBL season by beating the Perth Wildcats by seven points at the Perth Arena on Friday night.

The bottom-of-the-table Kings dominated the top-of-the-table Cats in the opening half to set up a 84-77 victory.

It's fitting the league was celebrating Heritage month, because the last time Sydney won in Perth was in the 2007-08 season. The Perth Arena wasn't even built then.

And Sydney's coach Andrew Gaze admits he was nervous to the last buzzer.

"It's a great feeling," he said.

"I am really happy for the players. We've seen really good progress over the last three to four weeks, although we haven't seen the reward.

"It was a great win and our situation; you have to rejoice every winning moment, no matter how they come."

The Kings led by 12 points at the main break and withstood the inevitable comeback from the home side.

Perth got the margin back to within two points late in the third term and to within four in the last, but things didn't go right for them when they needed it to.

The Kings were without Brad Newley who stayed in Sydney to be with his heavily pregnant partner Brigid. But Jerome Randle was enough for Perth to handle. His 19 points coming despite clearly suffering from a thigh injury.

Perry Ellis also starred with a double-double (13 points and 10 rebounds).

Perth produced their worst start for the season, trailing 20-11 at the first change and they were lucky to have been that close.

Five minutes after the start of the game they had just two points on the board.

Only one of the Wildcats' first 11 field goal attempts dropped as Sydney raced to a 10-2 lead and only seven late points from Jean-Pierre Tokoto saved the hosts' from total embarrassment.

And things didn't get any better for the Cats in the second term.

They received a second delay of game violation in the opening minute and when Randle dropped his first three-pointer a minute later, the margin had blown out to 15 points.

Bryce Cotton couldn't get anything to fall. His first field goal came one minute before three-quarter-time. He finished with 17 points while Tokoto top-scored for the Cats with 20.

The Wildcats lost four of their past five games at the Perth Arena, the venue they call the Jungle and that teams used to fear to enter.

The loss was their fifth from their past eight appearances, anywhere.

And coach Trevor Gleeson admitted Sydney were the better team.

"The 10-2 start really set the tone of the game," he said.

"You're eight points behind, then 10. The biggest lead was 19. It's not a good trend we are setting the past three games that we're behind all the time - behind double-digits.

"We missed lay ups, we missed easy points. Is it a skill-set, or is that mentally? That's probably the latter."

The teams play a return clash in Sydney on Sunday.






AAP