Tigers kept themselves in the race for a play-off spot with this convincing win against bottom of the league Cougars.
At its best, this Tigers team moves the ball quickly to open up good quality looks at the basket, and they did just that in the first quarter. Glyn Davies, in particular, found himself on the end of a number of slick moves and he picked up 12 points as a 24 – 16 lead was established.
The precision went out of Taunton's play a little in the second period, which allowed Cornwall to come back to within 5 points. Joe Saunders did, though, start to establish himself as a major influence on the game and his 8 points in the quarter were a key feature in seeing his side to a 43 – 30 half-time lead.
In truth, despite the score-line, Tigers weren't dominating the match in the way they would have hoped. That, perhaps, explained the length of Coach Gary Carter's team talk, which meant that his side re-emerged only just in time for the second half.
In a scrappy start to the third quarter, Taunton put in an impressive defensive effort which enabled them to slowly build the lead to 17 points. Cougars responded, though, by closing out the quarter with a run of 9 points that was only interrupted by a long-range effort from Tigers' Chris Mullan.
Tigers' best period of the game came at the start of the fourth quarter. In just over 4 minutes they clinched the game with a fantastic burst of high energy team basketball. Dan Howe, Joe Randall, Davies, Saunders and Richard Nelsey all scored in a run that took the score from 55 – 44 to 68 – 44. The outcome was never in doubt after that.
After the game Carter looked at the possible significance of this win,
“With Chichester losing to Bognor our season is still alive as we maintain our goal of winning all our games in 2010 and possibliy reaching the playoffs. The last couple of games have been ideal opportunities to rotate the bench and see who is ready for the fight.”