By JACK BAILEY AND JARROD POTTER
THE CASEY Cavaliers continued its good start to the season with an 84-52 win over Keysborough in the Division One men’s basketball competition.
The heated rivalry resumed as Keysborough hosted Casey for the first time in a couple of seasons.
There was no love lost in a foul-filled night down at Springers Leisure Centre, as the Casey Cavaliers endured the whistle getting blown over 50 times, but still did enough to guarantee the comfortable win.
The game started fiercely with Casey and Keysborough going shot for shot.
Matt Witherden led from the front for Casey with 30 points as his five three-pointers heaped the pressure onto Keysborough’s defence.
Witherden would’ve been thrilled to have Brent Hobba back in the line-up, for the first time since he injured his ankle in round 1, as the former NBL/SEABL champion scored 20 points and reeled in six rebounds.
By the end of the first quarter Casey had amassed a three point lead.
The second quarter showed the dominance the Casey Cavaliers possess. Their defence was impeccable as they restricted Keysborough to only 10 points for the term.
In the end Casey was too strong and kept Keysborough to only eight points in the final term.
Some Cougars’ resistance was shown by Aaron Abram who scored 20 points and five rebounds, but by and large the Cavaliers were too strong in the end.
Guard Ben Louis chipped in with 13 points for Casey, but most importantly took on one of the difficult tasks in manning former SEABL team-mate Calvin Enge (six points).
It was all about solid defence for coach Stewart Baird after the win as his side continues it’s high-flying start to 2016.
“We’ve now gone half a game of good defence, three quarters of a game of good defence and last game we had a whole game of it,” Baird said. “Really good contribution across the board, nice return from Hobbs (Hobba) and Witho (Witherden) got after it again and now he is causing me headaches cause I got to shuffle him back into the starting five and where does everyone fall it’s a nice problem to have.
“We set a goal at the start of the year and one of our goals was to be the best defensive team in the league and statistically we’ve been that for the last few weeks.”
In a tight battle the Casey Cavaliers women hosted the Mornington last Saturday and the third place Cavaliers played outstandingly in a 67-52 win to hand the Breakers its first loss of the season.
The game started off tightly with each team showing outstanding offence and defence as only one point separated them after the first quarter.
The second half was a completely different story.
Casey sped out to an eight-point lead by the end of the third quarter and never looked back. In the end Casey won by 15 points in a great display against the top team.
Tarryn Wilkin led from the front for Casey with 16 points15 and rebounds. She was closely assisted by Ruchelle Mccracken who scored 12 points.
The Casey Cavaliers will host the biggest night on the club’s schedule on Saturday – the annual Ballin’ for Breast Cancer pink jersey night – when the senior men face Geelong, the women battle Melbourne University and the junior men face Chelsea.
“it’s really important and it’s really grown,” Baird said. “This is the fourth one I’ve been involved in and it’ll be the third one with the pink jerseys, and the second one since Stevie’s mum (Debra Spinks) passed and she was one of the drivers of this.
“I think the whole club really gets behind it, everyone in the club has been impacted by breast cancer in some way or another so it’s a really important night for us and the boys really respect what it’s about, so they’ll be ready to go for sure.”
