Wolves win 95-80, but that doesn’t tell the story

Today on the site my beat writer colleagues are rightfully taking the opportunity to give props to the teams they cover at this stage of the season. There must be something in the air as when I left campus last night my thoughts were that I wanted to put the stats and the baskets to one side and tell you that if you didn’t already know it, you should be very afraid of the Worcester Wolves.

Sheffield came to play hard inside with Lyons and the downright nasty Tuck (his game not the man) giving Worcester and Richie Gordon a hard time early on. Gordon was frustrated all game, didn’t get the calls from the officials and ended up spending most of the minutes in foul trouble. As the matchup unfolded Coach James also probably felt that it was beneficial to keep Gordon out of the fight against an aggressive Sheffield.

There’s only one way to be effective against Worcester and that is to ‘do the right thing’. Choose a defensive scheme for whatever period in the game, don’t make plans for individuals and stay disciplined. Even then you will only potentially edge the contest if you execute your offensive sets extremely well.

It was a near capacity crowd on campus with the fans getting behind their team vocally. At half-time however, with the Wolves down by three, there was a lot of discontent and a lot of talk about having witnessed a poor first-half performance. It hadn’t been a poor first-half performance though, there was one facet of the game which created that perception and that was the Wolves inability to convert from 20 feet. Freeman, Watts and Prezzie-Blue all turned that around in the second twenty. Wolves had worked hard in the first two quarters though, had kept within a basket of the visitors and had exploited space in behind the Sheffield D when things weren’t falling from outside.

My thoughts at the break were that the game was there for either coach to lose and I thought that because it was about getting the basics right and as I alluded to earlier, doing the right thing. Defences had been stretched, had lost composure and a focus on who rather than how in backcourt had left room for both sides to exploit.

Worcester came out and took the game away from Sheffield as they understood how to find their way to the W. Sherrad Prezzie-Blue is a man for a crisis and time and time again he exploited the space in the Sheffield key to get to the basket. On several occassions he drew the foul and completed a three point play. In fact when Sherrad came back out for the second-half he went straight to the charity stripe for his warm up routine as he knew he could be spending some time there.

Wolves worked the ball around well, were visibly looking to draw the Sheffield five back by going inside and working the ball out to their men on the perimiter. Tommy Freeman was working hard inside (when faced with a guarding hand outside) and dishing the ball out to his team mates behind the arc. Freeman was also the beneficiary of the tactics employed by the Wolves second-half as he got several open looks to complete a reversal of fortune. The Sharks had held a six point lead at one point in the first and the Wolves turned that in to six points in their favour in the third quarter.

Watts was the perfect answer to the visitors approach. He worked hard on his own boards, put up big threes and floated the ball up and in from 10 feet.

Wolves took this by a huge fifteen points in the end which says an awful lot about this class of 2012. But before that, I have to recognise the contribution of the Sheffield Sharks. Tuck does have a demeanour which won’t endear him to any away crowds but boy is he effective. He works hard for his team, remains focused and works very well in tandem with Jimmy Langhurst. The little man himself got beat up at times in this one but kept coming and coming and showed immense determination and talent. Patton was a threat all night from the perimiter and his threes were good to watch at times as he nonchalantly put them up and in. Babalola and Lyons also made important contributions although Atiba fouled out late on.

Now back to those Wolves and as I said, be afraid, be very afraid. I personally think this was a next level performance, particularly with Gordon rarely involved. Games of this nature (when Wolves have missed threes early) have gone down to the wire for Worcester at home this year and against teams that don’t have the talent the Sharks have at their disposal. Maybe Sheffield imparted some of their steel as Worcester savagely put the visitors away.

They kept their shape in defence, worked hard and ran sets which got their outside shooters open. They never waivered and knew that despite having no joy from 20 feet for twenty minutes they could engineer the opportunities to change their fate. With Gordon out of it, Prezzie-Blue held the ship together and Freeman caught fire in the second ably assisted by Watts. During a tough game there were valuable contributions from Zimnickas and Jones and both Kaslauskas and Fernandez played an important role in the second-half rally.

Wolves travel to Cheshire today to face the Jets in a 5:30pm tip-off. While Worcester are now guaranteed a top four finish in the BBL they will be looking to secure second place in the coming weeks.