2021 - Round 1

Welcome to the 2021 season! The Red’s went 4-1 with some big wins across the grades - a great foundation to build on. Recaps below:

A’s (by Liam)

Over the years, the Reds have had some epic recruiting classes, but even before taking the court those that had been around a while already knew this one is a special one.  As a unit we’ve had minimal time together, though the wonders of the Adelaide basketball scene mean we all have a solid idea of each other’s game. 

And so we took to the court, confident but a little uncertain about how it would all go. 

It’s fair to say it went ok. 

From the tip we had great offensive chemistry. Very unselfish. Always making the extra pass. And because of that we shot very well. Defensively we were solid, but to their credit SHOC shot well and were in touching distance at quarter time. 

So we went to man... and the game ended as a contest. We had far too much against a team missing some of its bigger players. We forced misses and we ran. 

With the game over we tested out some other D sets and chased dunks. So it ended 99-45.  I’m genuinely excited for the year, not only is there incredible talent and balance, it truly is a great bunch of dudes too. 

Sam dropped 31, Josh 26, Blake got a dunk and everyone hit a 3 according to the scorecard. 

Votes could go to anyone aged under 35.

*** Sadly that’s only the second highest match total for the Old Reds A’s. Still got work to do.

B’s (by Mike)

With a grandfinal rematch to begin the season, The B’s saw little change to their roster, losing Sibly and Fox, and replacing them with Francesca, Huezy, Stewart and Self. Sadly the last three were away this week, and Reds were running their first game with 6. A fairly ordinary game for all. The bigs were big, the small were fast and the reds won by 2. Mike got injured so the rest of the boys carried his ass.

C’s (by Kara)

C-Grade Red men fronted up for another season, up in division but with some big bodies and bigger hearts, we were ready to put the hurt on our opposition. We came up against former A-Grade mob The Schvitz who looked to be correctly placed in Division 2. 

We started out reasonably well scoring a few early baskets inside and getting to the line. The big men of The Schvitz also managed to get free for a few layups and dirty cherry-picking fast break points to give them an early lead. 

They held onto this lead for most of the game until a couple of quick threes in succession from Matt drew us back to within striking distance. In the end, we fell short and went down by 14 in a respectable loss but hungry to make amends next week. Given a few guys hadn’t played together before, this was a reasonable first outing for the team.

D’s (by Mark)

The PAOCBC D's came up against the Somerton Smash Bros in their first game of the season. With a full squad of 8 players available we had the numbers to overcome an apparent lack of preseason training. Early on neither team troubled the scorers much, though Lunny got going in the last minutes of the first quarter with a couple of inside buckets to keep ahead 6-5 at the end of the first quarter. A pair of free throws from newcomer Riley Kirpatrick pushed the Reds out to 8-5 at the start of the second quarter however from there the scoring dried up again and the Smash Bros worked away inside to take a 10-15 lead at half time.

In the second half Jimmy Townsend started to get going with a burst of layups and jump shots including a pair of 3 pointers. Meanwhile, Riley and Jarrod Bishop  worked away consistently to start to push the Reds lead out. In the end the Smash Bros couldn't keep up and the Reds won 39-26. Jimmy and Bish led the scoring with 12 points each.

E’s (by Caldy)

Coming in mostly unchanged from last year, with the exception of losing Lachlan Campbell due to work commitments and adding sharpshooter Nathan Graham the E’s were feeling as they do most years, happy to be back but overall unfussed at facing another season of action-packed basketball.

Coming up against newcomers “Savage Army”, whom all appeared much younger and fitter than us, we figured we would have a running game on our hands. Luckily for us, that didn’t quite eventuate. What did eventuate however was our big guys were able to feast on the inexperienced defensive structures that Savage Army bought. Savage Army were able to stay in the game for the first half with some nice shooting and driving from their youngest player (whom appeared to be about 14 years old) coupled with a “number” of missed shots from fast break expert Daniele Tosato. It is worth noting that Daniele did redeem himself with a nice 3 to put any comeback beyond doubt. 

The second half was a much more one sided affair with Hendo and Brad dominating down low, scoring 17 and 18 points respectively. Although not troubling the scorers, Flair had 3 fouls and G-man with an uncharacteristically 0 points had 1 foul with a number of excellent assists. Jon and Simon both had 8 points rounding out the roster in an overall great team effort.

My personal highlight was managing to find a carton of beers for $33.00 (Hollandia) for post game beers that for the price, tasted bloody great and I feel they may become a staple for the season. We were eventual winners 57 – 24 and now sit very uncomfortably at the top of the ladder.