ABL: Singapore Slingers burn KL Dragons 74-61 for second win of season

The Slingers raced into an 11-0 lead within the first three minutes of the first quarter which caused Dragons coach Goh Cheng Huat to call for a timeout to address his team’s tactics. With new import Killeen towering over the majority of the Slingers’ players at 2.10m, it was clear that Goh wanted his team’s play to revolve around the Irishman.

That seemed to work as Killen and Hartman combined to get 13 points for the Dragons to trailing the Slingers by nine points at 13-21 at the end of the first quarter.

The second quarter was a finely-balanced one with both teams scoring 14 points apiece as the Slingers kept their nine-point lead intact at 35-27. Killeen contributed another three points for the Dragons but that was the end of his influence on the game as the Slingers shut him out in the remaining two quarters.

Instead it was Dragons’ Filipino import Rudy Lingganay who began to get into his groove alongside the on-song Hartman in the third quarter.

The Canadian-American shooting guard contributed 11 points while Rudy added nine points to his four scored in the second quarter.

Hartman landed all three free throws when he was fouled outside the three-point arc to cut the deficit to 37-41. Although the Slingers extended their lead to 55-42, the Dragons went on a superb seven-point run towards the end of the quarter to close in to within six points at 49-55.

It did look worrying for the Slingers when Hartman was fouled by Desmond Oh and the former duly converted both free throws to narrow the lead to 55-51 early in the fourth quarter, but all those troubles were banished by superb three-point shooting from the Slingers’ long-range specialists, Vergara and Avenido.

In total, the two combined to score a massive 15 points from outside the arc in the final period, helping the Slingers to their biggest lead of 16 at 74-58.

That marked the end of the Dragons’ resistance. Despite a Chee Li Wei three-pointer in the final minute, the Slingers prevailed 74-61 to achieve their second victory in three ABL games this season.

The Slingers will next travel across the Causeway to KL to play the Dragons on Saturday, October 23rd.

With that clash looming, coach Neo admitted this victory was one he craved for.

“This game really gave me much pressure. We needed to get this win because we have back-to-back games against them. It’s tough to go for away games so we really need to take advantage at home,” he said.

On his preparations for the clash, he added: “We’ll look at the game film to see what went wrong today and we’ll adjust from there. Basically our transition defence is a bit slow today.”

The Slingers lost their only away encounter against the Dragons last season but Leo Avenido said that his team will go into the match with no fears.

“Maybe it’s difficult because it’s their home court, but we’re ready,” he said.

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