congratulations gaze.

it was your night - even pushed brett Maher out the way and stroked a shot - "birthday boy"

yeah that was pretty bad. Now sydney, the games dont get any easier. ah!

A great game from Dusty. Seemed to do all the work tonight apart from a few good shots from Oscar. Unfortunately 1 good player alone does not win a game for the team.

any news on darren's hand?

what happened to his hand?

EC thankyou for stating the bleeding obvious...

Darren went to the changerooms at one point holding his hand. Commentators thought it was a finger sprain I think.

Top games from Dusty (live stats say 28 and 21!), Oscar (16 and 10) and Cooper (10 and 10). Maher had 12, 6 and 6, but had many uncharacteristic turnovers.

That would have to have been Farley's worst game as a Sixer(?) Struggled to hit a shot all night and finished with 4 points. I don't think he dropped his head though, just couldn't buy a bucket (2 of 14).

Congratulations to Brad Gerlach on his first NBL stats -- two points, a rebound and a steal. Looked good out there.


EC -- I hope you're not blaming the schedule change for this one! ;)
Sixers weren't terrible (59-44 on the boards), but the Tigers shot very well and had a lot of bounces fall their way. Sixers 3 of 17 from outside is not great!

GO SNAKE!!

Isaac, anything at all about tonight could have been responsible for the result of this game. Had they played this game as originally scheduled, it couldn't have turned out any worse except for Dusty's and Oscar's performance.

But it's just an excuse. Yes, they have a couple of games in 3 days, but the Tigers have 3 in 5. Kings have 2 games in 2 days, etc. The schedule change also alleviates pressure later in January when we would have otherwise played on the 26th, 29th, and then away on the 30th. If we couldn't win this one after a few days off, surely playing them in our 3rd game of five days would be even harder?

We were down one player, against a team with a roster superior to any other in the league (which was playing well on top of that), playing away from home, in a packed stadium, and Farley had a terrible game. Also, that was the first game this season where Maher has had more turnovers than assists. Those are reasons enough for the loss, IMO.

There were so many things that went wrong in this game. Farley has never played that badly. Maher struggled as well. This is not typical of Sixers' games at home nor away. For that reason it was unlikely that a similar result would have occured on the originally sheduled game. Take away from this the added incentive that came with Gaze's 600th game. If the Sixers play well at home on the 29th January, that good form may have continued the next day. It would have been the best training session they could have had and Melbourne is only a 1 hour flight away. I travel 1 hour every day to go to work.

Sorry, but I still stick by my belief that it was a bad move to re schedule this game. One good thing came out of it though, the Sixer's can hold their head high because of their loyalty to the Tigers in agreeing to this schedule change. Let's hope one day they can return this favour.

How long has it been where Brett has not hit a triple?

Our shooting sucked last night but at least we are not Cairns who shot 28% against the gong.

Great game from Dusty against the NBL's greatest rebounder.

The Tigers are looking very dangerous this year.....very big and Lindsay seems to have discovered the guys sitting next to him in uniforms are players as well.

There are a few "unlikely" and "may have" 's in there EC. Yes, the Sixers might've played well on the 29th and taken that form to Melbourne. Or they just as likely would have been exhausted from 3 games in 5 days, playing on the road, travelling the same day they were playing, etc.

When you travel 1 hour to work, do you sit in departure lounges? Wait in queues outside of that 1 hour? Wait for take-off? I flew 30+ times last year and the one hour flights were just as bad as the 14 hour flights -- if the legroom issue annoys me, imagine what it would do for the team. I'm not saying it's a huge factor, but it's not a trivial impact.

Schedule changes and referees are excuses for last night. The Tigers played very well, and the Sixers weren't at their best. Our game might've beaten a NZ or Taipans outfit, but not Melbourne.

Farley opened the season with a 10 point game that was not his best. It happens. Last night, it happened while the Tigers were in full flight with a roster that had Stiff, D-Mac and Tucker coming off the bench. We were beaten by a superior roster and that could well happen again a few more times with the run we have over the final few rounds.

I tipped the Tigers. And I would tip the Tigers if this game was back on the 30th too.

I'd rather that Farley get a bad game out of his system in an away game against a nemesis than have saved it for Friday night.

Kent -- if the Sixers can't take the Championship, who wouldn't want the Tigers to get it for Gaze? They have a very deep roster when Rashad Tucker (touted pre-season as the ultimate and MVP favourite, blah blah blah) can come off the bench for 10-15 MPG.

Brett was 0 of 4 from outside against Perth in Round 14. That's the only other game where he's missed all his three-point attempts this season. 12 is his lowest score for the season.

If the Sixers can take down Sydney on Friday, and Dusty has a half-decent game, he gets my POTW -- 21 boards against Bradtke is huge.

His 13 offensive rebounds gets him into the Sixers all-time top ten:

Top ten offensive boards (prior to last night):

20 Davis
16 Clausen
14 Jones
14 Davis
14 Phillips
13 Davis
13 Davis
13 Bradtke
12 Nelson
12 Davis

Yeah the Tigers are sentimental favourites every year....if the sixers dont make the gf the great scenario would be for Drew to hit a 3 on the buzzer in front of Goorjian to win the series by 1

The Tigers bench - STIFF, TUCKER, MOTTRAM, DMAC and CORLETTO are a great backup 5.
SPORTSCENTRE has them at $8.00 to win it all prior to this game.

Dont worry about Farley he will bounce back HARD

Dusty POTW? I'll drink to that.

Yeah Kriss,

You hit the nail on the head. Melbourne's bench is outstanding.

It doesn't matter who/when/where we play. The truth is that if Maher and Farley both have poor games we are going to lose.

It is not an insult on the rest of the team, just a reality of how the team is constructed.

When we were bringing Jason Williams and Darren Ng off the bench, and they were bringing in Rashad Tucker and Darryl McDonald .

I don't think a lot more has to be said. Good luck to Melbourne. If they can get away with replacing Greg Blake with Rashad Tucker legally then they deserve some credit as that sure is some creative front office work.

As Isaac said, just count it down to a bad game and we know Maher and Farley will come out firing tomorrow night.

They won't have 2 bad ones in a row.