Urban Knights perfect, but coach unhappy with offense

LeVaughn Flynn, Staff Reporter

Champions Urban Knights are a perfect five from five in the KFC National Basketball League, with their latest win coming against perennial rivals St George's Slayers on Thursday night at the National Stadium court.

Knights were convincing 72-50 winners but that hasn't quelled the concerns of coach Calvin Martin, who said his team is far from playing quality basketball.

"It was Slayers doing more bad than us playing good," he said of Thursday's win.

Martin did manage to highlight some positives though, adding: "We defended well and rebounded the ball better than them."

The final quarter decided the outcome after Knights outscored Slayers 26-7, handing the North Street -based team their second loss of the season from five games.

Scoring gap

Despite the huge scoring gap in the final period, Martin said he is more comfortable with his defence than his offence.

"I would say we're one of the top two teams in defence, but offensively we're not there," he said. "We're playing too slow, the control is not there and the decision making (is not good)."

Martin added that he has put a timeline on which his team's play should start looking like championship calibre basketball.

"By the start of the second round we should be able to put everything together offensively and defensively," he said.

"I want us to be a multi-defensive team - can play all defences well - because you can't win a championship without defence."

Captain Andrew Whilby led Knights in scoring with 14 points and 13 rebounds and Morais Reddie and Omar Barnes chipped in with 13 and 12 points, respectively.

Slayers trailed 43-46 going into the final quarter but collapsed over the next 10 minutes. They were plagued by turnovers the entire night, committing 35 to Knights' 21. That was compounded by a lack of scoring with Howard Daley emerging the top scorer with only nine points.

"We failed to take care of the ball and we took bad shots," said team captain Rohan Robinson, who missed the game with a knee injury. Robinson's absence also made it easier for Whilby to score in the paint.

"We were playing without a centre and one of our main problems is that we don't have a true point guard - people have just been filling in."

Knights' next opponent, Link Up All-Stars, also suffered a huge defeat on Thursday losing 73-57 to Arnett Gardens Rockers. Led by Arnell Campbell's 23 points, Arnett raced out to a 43-27 lead at half-time and maintained the advantage for a comfortable victory. Ian Gooden added 13 points and nine rebounds. Link Up's top scorer, Garfield Campbell, had 18 points and Maurice Hanson added 12.