It was awfully tedious but the Otago Nuggets ground out a 98-77 win against the Indian Panthers in Auckland.
The highlight reel will make for a very brief watch.
The Panthers barely raised a sweat on defence tonight.
The Nuggets missed a lot of open looks.
The whole affair was deeply uninspiring.
But the Nuggets have improved their record to 3-2 and they left some gas in the tank for tomorrow’s home fixture against the Auckland Tuatara.
That is job done as far as they are concerned.
Don Carey jun top scored with 22 and Jonathan Janssen posted 19 points.
Jose Perez stacked the stats sheet with 18 points, 12 assists, nine rebounds and two seals.
The new recruit Jaylen Sebree (18) drilled six of his nine three-point attempts. He looks smooth from range.
The Panthers are a rabble but they have a couple of decent performers.
Jaylen Gerrand led all scorers with 29 points and Alex Robinson had a busy shift with 18 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.
Carey opening the scoring. He banged in an open three-pointer seconds into the game.
There was no Panthers’ defender in sight and they remained awol.
Janssen had three open looks in a row and got the third one in.
Sebree got in on the action and swished another triple for the Nuggets.
The Panthers were not able to put the Nuggets under any pressure defensive at all.
But they stayed in the quarter because the Nuggets shot quite poorly.
It was 10 minutes of very ugly basketball.
The Nuggets’ 22-15 lead was trimmed to three points in the opening exchanges of the second period.
The visitors looked like they had forgotten to take the handbrake off.
Sebree had his range-finder dialled in from out wide, though. He landed a third three-pointer.
But another lacklustre quarter was playing out in front of barely any spectators at Pulman Arena.
The official attendance was listed as 210.
That was a blessing. No-one should have to suffer such a rancid half of basketball.
Perez finally got busy in the paint. He muscled his way to the hoop, got the bucket and the foul but missed the extra.
Robinson and Gerrand were doing the bulk of the scoring for the Panthers.
Gerrand banked in a three-pointer just before the long break to take his total to 19 points.
The Nuggets held a 50-44 advantage.
Every time the Panthers would cut the gap and make some inroads, the Nuggets would find a three-pointer.
They were operating more on volume than accuracy. And, with the odd easy bucket to Perez under the hoop, they maintained control of the fixture and eased to 72-58.
The fourth quarter was more of the same.
The main narrative keeping anyone still engaged was whether Perez would post a triple-double.
He needed one more rebound and was subbed with just under two minutes remaining in the game.
The Tuatara beat the Southland Sharks 102-92 in Invercargill tonight.
• The Nuggets had a monster win in the Rapid League game. They recorded a whopping 47-26 win.
Patrick Freeman enhanced his growing reputation with a game-high 16 points. He landed four of his five three-point attempts.
