By RUSSELL BENNETT
AS THE Pakenham Warriors continue to ramp up preparations for their Big V basketball season-opener this Saturday night, they can take plenty out of the weekend’s pre-season tournament.
The Division-2 men, this season coached by Warriors favourite son Jeff Reid, came away from their four game fixture at the Dandenong Basketball Stadium with two wins and two losses and showed a marked improvement from Saturday to Sunday.
“I was pretty happy with how we played – we really started to bond as a team and as a group,” Reid told the Gazette in the wake of the tournament.
The new-look Pakenham side finished fifth in the seven-team Division-2 field, but tied on points with the third-placed Keilor Thunder.
“We turned it around from Saturday to Sunday,” he said.
“We only scored 33 and 27 in our first two games but Sunday we were much better – in ball movement, execution and shot selection.”
Pakenham lost to Collingwood 41-33 on Saturday morning, and then to Maccabi 45-27 later in the day before reversing the trend on Sunday – defeating Oakleigh 54-33 and Keilor 46-44.
Reid said Harry Van Dort and Hayden Davey were two of the Warriors’ standouts from across the weekend.
“Hayden does what’s asked of him on both ends of the floor, and he’s already a very good rebounder and he’s still getting better,” Reid said of Davey, adding that Van Dort’s determination and drive also shone through.
“We showed real potential in the pre-season (prior to the tournament), but the boys found some real confidence and came out of their shells on the weekend,” Reid said.
It was envisaged that Van Dort would play a crucial role for the Warriors this season providing a real spark as a sixth man, but a knee injury on the weekend to Simo Pajdic could yet present him with even more court time.
Reid said he was unsure of the severity of Pajdic’s injury, as he was yet to have scans on his knee at the time the Gazette went to print.
As for the most impressive moment of the Warriors’ tournament on the weekend – Reid said that was easy to pinpoint.
“We won our last game with .08 left on the clock,” he said.
“It was a backdoor alley-oop play to Hayden Davey and he executed it perfectly.”
But there’s still plenty of work ahead of the team, which starts its season this Saturday night from 8.15pm at the Craigieburn Leisure Centre against the Eagles.
“We need to work on our defensive intensity,” Reid said.
“It was much better on the Sunday but it comes from effort and talk. We need to talk more out there.”
Turn to page 64 for coverage of the Warriors’ Big V women’s pre-season tournament.
