By JARROD POTTER
TRAVEL woes beset the Casey Cavaliers in round 11 BIG V action – with the Cavaliers women downed by the Werribee Devils 71-76 and the men were beaten 70-83.
It wasn’t the best start to the night for the Cavaliers women, as star centre Renae Mokrzycki cracked open her chin after slipping on the wet court – but the injury didn’t seem to affect her much as she hit 21 points and took 13 rebounds before being fouled out after only 29 minutes court time.
Problematically for Casey was it’s free throw conversion – woefully hitting only 20/43.
Casey coach Mark Holman was happy with everything except the free throws.
“In a nutshell – free throws,” Holman said.
“I think we executed a lot of the stuff we wanted to do – committed a few extra turnovers – but it came down to a five-point loss and we left too many points at the free line.”
Holman was pleased with the returns from Mokrzycki, his guards Amy Mcfarlane, Lara Pauline and Sammy Johnson and thought everyone off the bench played their part.
Casey women sit third on the ladder and face the Chelsea Gulls in the second match of a triple header on 15 June at Cranbourne Basketball Stadium.
There wasn’t just one facet the Casey men failed to execute in their own 70-83 loss to Maccabi.
Following Dean Johnson breaking his nose at training last Tuesday, the Cavaliers were forced to use injured forward Ash Szalek, who was down on his usual output, following an ankle injury the week before against Shepparton.
Toiling for the Cavaliers were Josh Lemi (23 points) and Dylan Wayman (13 points, five rebounds).
“It was very undisciplined -we weren’t disciplined on the day – let things that were out of control get in our head and let them get to us,” Casey coach Stewart Baird said.
“We got caught up in worrying about other stuff – had good patches, but it wasn’t the standard we wanted to set.”
The inside game was well exploited by Maccabi – forcing Baird to run Sean McKinnon and Pouch Puoc – who couldn’t hold out the better experienced Warriors talls.
“Sean started and picked up two quick fouls – Pouch is still learning the craft and he did a serviceable job, but they had two very good bigs and there’s only so much you can expect from a guy still learning the game,” Baird said.
“It was a difficult task we threw at him, and he worked very hard, but unfortunately they were too good.”
Casey faces Keysborough next Saturday, another team returning to form following their 101-71 win over Keilor.
