Poor shot selections and untimely turnovers proved to be costly as the Illinois State mens basketball team fell to the Sydney Kings of the Australian National Basketball League 80-74, Friday night at the Northern Beaches Indoor Sports Centre in front of 500 fans as assistant coach Chad Altadonna served as the Redbirds designated coach.
Gregg Alexander and Baboucarr Bojang led the charge for the Redbirds with 17 points a piece. Bojang posted a double-double by adding 13 rebounds. Head coach Tom Richardson was pleased with his teams performance from the first game, but still had some concerns.
I was a lot more pleased with our effort tonight, Richardson said. We rebounded better, we played better defense and we played better transition defense, but they were an experienced team that won out over our inexperience.
The last couple minutes of the game we just didnt execute. We missed a lot of shots. At one point, we missed four consecutive threes and our guys didnt react appropriately by taking the ball inside instead. We also had a lot of turnovers.
The Birds led 46-40 at the half and pushed the lead to 10 in the third quarter, but ISU was out-scored 40-28 in the second half. Illinois State shot 21-for-41 (.512) for the game, but coughed up 25 turnovers.
Vince Greene fouled out, but chipped in 13 points, six assists and four steals, while Trey Guidry and Kevin Troc tossed in 11 and 10 points, respectively. Guidry also had nine turnovers.
Travis Lane led the way for the Kings with a game-high 31 points.
The Redbirds will return to action on Saturday night at 7 p.m. AST (4 a.m. CDT), as Illinois State travels to Brisbane Saturday morning to face the Brisbane Capitals.
