Dagenham Park School, Dagenham 22/10/11

New opposition and an early start to get to Dagenham for an 11:00 tip meant that we were on the road shortly after 8:00am.  It was a beautiful sunny morning and we had the use of a minibus so we were all looking forward to an excellent game.  Would the atmosphere in the bus on the way back be as cheerful….only time would tell.

From the tip, it is clear that Rockets’ performances are improving as they traded possession with the Thunder and no one breaking the scoreline until almost three minutes in to the game.  It was Max who stepped up and scored first with a strong drive to the basket.  This “launched” game and, whilst both teams found their scoring touch, the Rockets had their most impressive start to a game I have seen so far, scoring almost two baskets for each one of Thunders to finish the quarter 10-18 up.

In quarter 2, the Thunder began to rumble back.  Rockets found it difficult to deal with the drives from their number 6.  We racked up a number of fouls in the layup which leaked 9 points to finish the quarter holding on to a slim advantage of 27-29.

Things calmed down a bit for quarter 3, although the foul-count remained high for both sides.  During quarter 2 Thunder had reorganised their defence and carried this on in quarter 3.  It was effective and Rockets were trying hard to break this down.  New offensive options were difficult to come up with and we continued to shoot from distance but were rarely successful taking this option.  Some lovely moves involving Jerome, Max and Brad quick passing their way through the Thunder resulted in some points but Rockets finished the quarter 45-42 down.

It was all to play for in quarter 4.  It was getting too nervy and that was just the spectators!  We continued to play end to end basketball but we were still having trouble dealing with Thunder’s drives to the basket and gave away a number of soft fouls to yield points.  This was doubled when we hit the team points limit and conceded more points off the back of this.  Although the Rockets continued to ask questions, ultimately the Thunder defence were just that little bit too strong for us to penetrate and the game ended with the Thunder winning 62-52.

Final Score : Barking and Dagenham Thunder 62 - Reading Rockets 52

The Rockets team development continues to be clear and this game was an excellent demonstration of this.  Faced with the same challenge before, Rockets would have been found wanting but not now…..we were a match for this team and it was only the small things that made the difference.  We gave away too many easy fouls, dealt badly with their aggressive style of play, gave possession away too cheaply and struggled with ides in offence when met with a tight defence ….all things that, on another day, we would not have done and would have gone on to win this game as a result.

On the positive side, rebounding against such a tall team has improved significantly and the desire to win this game from all members of the team was crystal clear.   The team should be proud of their performance and their progress this year and look forward to ironing out these niggles.

Coach Ben said after the game:

"I am really pleased with what I am seeing from the players at the moment. Today's first quarter was the best quarter of basketball we have ever played and we showed that what we have been working on so hard in practice is starting to show in the games we are playing. I thought we played well throughout and it was only the fact that we couldn't really deal with their two big guys that meant we ended up on the other side of the scoreline. I am hoping that we can carry forward the good performances we have been putting in and continue to develop into fundamentally sound basketball players but at the moment we still have a lot of work to do!"

Go on the Rockets!!!!

Team and scorer table: