| Titans Inaugural Season Comes to an End |
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The Titans inaugural season has come to an end after the team lost to the Snohomish County Explosion 124-111 on Wednesday night in Monroe, Washington. The game was part of the first round of the IBL playoff tournament, which is a single-elimination format – only the winner plays again. The Titans started slowly and found themselves in a hole early. Not even 2 minutes into the action Coach David Petroziello called his only timeout of the quarter to settle his team down. The call worked. The Titans started to execute their game-plan, and took a one-point lead with a little more than two minutes left in the first quarter. That tenacity would spark a seesaw battle that lasted three quarters, and saw the two teams exchange leads an incredible 18 times. The Titans headed into the game with a short-handed line-up due to injury. Among the missing players were big men, Richard Anderson and Jeremy McCulloch, and power forward Matt Rachar, three of their strongest down low players. The Titans’ starting line up consisted of three guards, and two forwards. That was how the team would play much of the game – lacking their normal inside presence. So they would have to make up for it from the outside. However, both Vancouver and Snohomish started the game shooting cold. Then, after the first 12 minutes, the shooters started to heat up. James Hudson brought the Titans back from a six-point deficit in the second quarter with back-to-back three pointers. Vancouver rode that momentum into the half with a 59-57 lead. In the third quarter, Titans guard Casey Archibald started to hit, dropping three straight from beyond the arc en route to a 21-point performance. But the Explosion’s Jason Hicks had a hot hand of his own, draining four consecutive three-pointers, the last of which put Snohomish up by six. Hicks went 6 of 8 from three-point land in the second half. In a game of momentum changes, Snohomish found a crucial time to take over, and had the Titans on their heels at the end of the third quarter. Vancouver needed to put together their strongest quarter of the game in order to continue their 2009 campaign. Unfortunately, that would prove difficult in the face of a surging Snohomish team. The Titans continued to struggle. Just four and a half minutes into the final period, they were down by 14 points – the game’s biggest lead. Coach Petroziello called his final timeout. After that, the Titans were able to muster a defensive answer and slow down the Snohomish momentum, but they still struggled to finish offensive chances. “We went ice cold,” said Petroziello. “We stopped making shots. And easy shots at that – we were inches from the rim. And when you’re not making the easy ones, everything else becomes a lot harder.” Late in the game, with the Titans down 102-112, Titans shooting guard Brian Banman had an open look at a three pointer, but the normally clutch shooter came up short. Then James Hudson, who was lights out earlier in the game, missed an open look at a three-pointer of his own. The Titans kept coming, but where they earlier found nothing but net, they hit cold iron down the stretch. Titans forward Jessan Gray spoke about what went wrong. “We were there, we just let the game get away from us,” said Gray. “We had too many careless mistakes… We kind of let it slip away. [Snohomish] isn’t a defensive team, but they’re one that plays on a lot of emotion. They go on little runs, and those little runs will kill you.” Coach Petroziello echoed those sentiments. “[Snohomish is] an emotional team. They thrive on getting easy baskets, and then they all of a sudden become better at everything else. We knew heading in that controlling their runs was going to be key, we had prepared a number of things to counter their tendency to feed off their emotion. We got the shots we wanted overall, they just stopped dropping.” Petroziello refused to blame the loss on injuries to key players, nor the fact that the team was playing its fourth game in its fourth city in six days. He also didn’t think the team’s faltering could be blamed on the young team’s nerves. “All of these players have experienced playoff basketball before,” said Petroziello. “I wouldn’t say [the breakdown] was due to nerves, so much as not having experience together. They may not have known how to react in that kind of situation as a unit.” The burden of being an expansion team may have played a factor in Wednesday night’s defeat, but Petroziello reflects positively on his team’s first foray into the IBL post-season. “It’s a learning experience for everyone,” said Petroziello. “I think we have a greater appreciation of what you need to win at this level.” And that means big things for the 2010 season. If the strides the Vancouver Titans made over the course of their first season are any indication, local hoops fans can look forward to another exciting year in season two. Quick Notes Snohomish Explosion |
