The Wollongong Roller Hawks sit on top of the National Wheelchair Basketball League (NWBL) ladder after a perfect 4-0 start to the season in Brisbane.

The Roller Hawks’ campaign began on Friday against arch rivals, the Perth Wheelcats. Up against a line up that included former teammate Michael Auprince, Wollongong lead at the first break by just one point before Perth started to gain the momentum in the second quarter, but with five seconds left in the half, an unsportsmanlike foul on Auprince saw the Aussie big man ejected from the game.

 

The Roller Hawks took full advantage of the Wheelcats’ sudden lack of inside presence, outscoring their opponents 51-28 in the second half. As a team, the Roller Hawks shot the ball with a whopping 70% accuracy with captain Brett Stibners leading the way with 41 points, 11 rebounds and 6 assists.

 

Luke Pople scored 22 points to go with 8 assists while Shawn Russell contributed with 16 points and 6 rebounds on 8 from 9 shooting.

 

“The tech foul and the unsportsmanlike foul was unfortunate for ‘Aupie’ and Perth, and it helped us” said Stibners. “Aupie was shooting well and playing well in defence.”

 

“We eventually ground out a good win but it won’t be the same the next time we play, Perth hadn’t had a training session together before the weekend.”

 

The win was the first of four for the Roller Hawks with the defending champions accounting for Kilsyth and West Adelaide on Saturday before rounding out the weekend with a 48 point win over the Red Dust Heelers.

 

Stibners averaged 28 points, 10.3 rebounds and 6 assists across the four games including Sunday’s game against Red Dust where he took a back seat, scoring just 12 points (with 10 assists) to allow Wollongong’s bench players to shine.

Coach Brendan Dowler was good to his word on trying to get more out of his extended squad with Brad Fisher (27 minutes per game) and Clay Kelly (18.5 minutes per game) seeing plenty of game time and looking more and more comfortable as the weekend progressed with Fisher scoring 10 points in the matches against both West Adelaide and Red Dust.

 

“Brad and Clay played really well this weekend contributing at both ends.” said Stibners. “They will get a lot of confidence from the opening round. The positive for us this weekend was when we clicked as a unit, we played really well.”

 

Dowler’s option of being able to go only with mid and high pointers gave Wollongong a big line up but it meant there were limited minutes for low pointers such as Nick Scott and Tim Markcrow although it didn’t stop Queensland based Hannah Dodd making a cameo after being a last minute inclusion on the side’s roster after not being expected to play for the Roller Hawks this season.

 

In other results, after losing to the Roller Hawks in the opening game, Perth went on to win their remaining 3 games while the Sydney Metro Blue Hornets also finished the weekend with 3 wins and 1 loss. Behind them were Kilsyth who split their games with two wins and two losses. Last year’s wooden spooners West Adelaide got one win and took a lot of confidence from their other performances while the Queensland Spinning Bullets struggled without star Tom O’Neill-Thorne and had just one win also. The Red Dust Heelers lost all four of their games and will be doubly concerned at the lopsided margins, losing by an average of 48 points.

 

The Roller Hawks’ attention now turns to Round 2 and a local derby against the Sydney Metro Blue Hornets. The sides will play three games from 31st May to 2nd June with the Roller Hawks hosting the Blue Hornets at Shellharbour City Stadium (Friday) and the Snakepit, Beaton Park (Saturday) before travelling to Sydney to play the final game on Sunday.

 

For full box scores and ladder go to http://websites.sportstg.com/comp_info.cgi?c=1-4219-0-520412-0&a=FIXTURE&compID=520412

 

ROLLER HAWKS ROUND 1 RESULTS

 

Friday May 10: ROLLER HAWKS 89 def PERTH WHEELCATS 70

Saturday May 11: ROLLER HAWKS 65 def KILSYTH COBRAS 44

Saturday May 11: ROLLER HAWKS 77 def WEST ADELAIDE THUNDER 36

Sunday May 12: ROLLER HAWKS 79 def RED DUST HEELERS 31