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Satria Muda Dominates Slingers, Sends Playoff Series to Deciding Game 3
Paul Freelend | February 04, 2010

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If Wednesday night’s game was the last Asean Basketball League contest at home this season for Satria Muda Britama, it left its fans with one hell of a show.

Needing a win to stay alive in the playoffs, Satria Muda put together its most dominating performance of the season in a 74-45 rout of the Singapore Slingers at Britama Arena. The Slingers will host the deciding Game 3 at Singapore Indoor Stadium on Sunday.

“Strategies are out the door. It’s all about heart and how aggressive we come out to play,” Satria Muda coach Fictor Roring said, using Mario Wuysang as an interpreter. “The aggressiveness and heart wasn’t there in Singapore, but we came out tonight and played with heart and that’s what we have to do in the next game.”

Nearly everything that could go wrong did so for the Slingers, who won Game 1 87-68 at home on Jan. 31. The hot shooting that carried them early in the first game was nowhere to be found, hitting just 24 percent (15 of 62) of their shots. In addition, they lost the rebounding battle (44 to 31) against Satria Muda for the first time in five meetings this season.

For Satria Muda, Wednesday was the polar opposite of Game 1. Shots fell, opposing possessions ended after one attempt and a raucous home crowd cheered every trip up the floor. The wayward passes and broken plays that so frustrated the Indonesian champion last week turned into points rather than turnovers.

Most notable was the defensive effort. Satria Muda blocked 13 Slingers shots, nine coming from Nakiea Miller, and forced 15 turnovers while allowing the visitors just nine assists. Singapore was outscored 44-14 in the paint and 22-10 off the bench.

Shorn of Christian Ronaldo Sitepu, one of the team’s top post players, Fictor chose to go small and started guard Amin Prihantono. The move created a mismatch for the Slingers, forcing American forward Michael LeBlanc out of the paint and freeing up Miller to do damage inside.

And what damage he did. Miller finished with 24 points and 16 rebounds, and he continued his recent upswing in free-throw shooting by making all four of his attempts. Alex Hartman had a comparatively quiet scoring night with 15 points, but he also contributed eight rebounds and seven assists.

“We filled in with a lineup that would match [Singapore] better, and that was adding a smaller guard to the lineup,” Hartman said. “Amin came in and played great defense, and then we put in Rony [Gunawan] and he played great. Wely had his best game of the season. He was perfect from the field, and you can’t ask for anything better than that.”

Welyanson Situmorang was the local star, ending a flawless night from the field by making all five of his shots from the field and both free throws. His 12 points was third-best on the team, with Mario and Wendha Wijaya each scoring six.

Sitepu, meanwhile, flew to the Philippines on Thursday night to undergo surgery on a torn ACL that will likely keep him sidelined for the rest of the ABL and possibly the Indonesian Basketball League season.

Hartman said Satria Muda showed its true colors after an ABL playoff debut to forget.

“Mentally, we just weren’t ready. It was playoff jitters, maybe we were a little scared to see what [Singapore] had,” Hartman said. “We don’t play well there. Both times we’ve been there we’ve been blown out, but we needed this game to turn that around and show ourselves that we can beat them.

“When we got there, we just took ourselves out of the game by getting fouls and complaining to the refs. Today we said we’re not going to complain, we’re just going to go and get it done.”

LeBlanc had 14 points and six rebounds to lead Singapore, while fellow American Kyle Jeffers struggled for his six points on 2-of-13 shooting to go with 11 rebounds. Al Vergara added 10 points, with no other Slinger scoring more than four.

Slingers coach Frank Arsego said the result was part of a worrying trend for his team in Jakarta.

“If you would go back and look at the two games we had here in the regular season, this gym is the gym from hell for us because we’ve struggled to shoot the ball here,” he said. “We’ve got a bit of work to do if we want to win some games here. We won one game, but we just snuck in at the end, and in the other game we had the same issues.”

Singapore won the season series against Satria Muda 2-1, the first victory coming in a 96-72 blowout in Singapore on Nov. 1. The Slingers shot a blistering 63 percent (40 of 63) from the field and 60 percent (9 of 15) on 3-pointers in that game.

Subsequent visits to Jakarta have not been as kind. Even when the Slingers won 61-59 at Britama Arena on Nov. 14, they did so despite shooting 34 percent from the field and making three of their 15 3-point attempts. The teams’ final regular-season meeting, a 67-58 Satria Muda win on Dec. 12, saw the host limit Singapore to 28 percent (18 of 65) shooting, including a 3-of-17 performance on 3-pointers.

“You can understand why in the later stages of the season teams were trying very hard to get the home-court advantage. Most of the teams in the Asean league feel comfortable playing at home, and tonight we played a team that was very committed,” Arsego said. “It wasn’t a playoff standard sort of game to even give us a chance. From that point of view, that’s disappointing for us. It could’ve been one point, it could’ve been 50 points, but it’s still 1-1 and we’ve got another game Sunday back home.”

In Wednesday’s other ABL playoff game, the top-seeded Philippines Patriots overcame a sluggish start to beat the KL Dragons 70-65 in Malaysia and win their semifinal series 2-0.

Chris Kuete finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds to pace the Dragons, who led 22-13 after the first quarter. Rudy Lingganay scored 13 points before fouling out, and Shee Fai Loh scored 12 points. Jason Dixon had 22 points and 12 rebounds to lead the Philippines, and Gabriel Freeman finished with 17 points and 12 rebounds.

The Philippines, which finished atop the regular-season standings at 11-4, will have home-court advantage in the best-of-five finals series. Game 1 takes place in Manila on Feb. 12.




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