MATCH REPORT: Rocks just fall short against the City Patriots
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Five games after their last matchup, the Plymouth Patriots overcome the Glen Luss Glasgow Rocks in a high-scoring, three-point heavy affair which finished 115-105 in favour of the hosts, Plymouth Patriots.
The Rocks were six games unbeaten in the build-up to tonight’s matchup beating the Lions, Phoenix, Scorchers, Giants, and Lions again with their last loss being a 95-86 defeat to the Surrey Scorchers.
Plymouth only won twice in their last five before facing the Rocks tonight, a 98-84 win against Surrey and a 96-80 triumph over the Chesire Phoenix.
Rashad Hassan won the tip and opened the scoring for the Patriots tonight, before grabbing a defensive rebound and scoring a quick four points before fouling Jordan Harris, who converted one of his two free throws to open Rocks’ scoring.
The first quarter was a difficult one for the Rocks who, at one point, were trailing by 18 but finished the quarter down 16 with a tall order ahead of them for the remaining three quarters.
Opening the second quarter, Fraser Malcolm scored four points to take the lead down to 12 before a Patriots timeout to limit the momentum Glasgow was building up, coming out of the timeout, Jordan Johnson got fouled on a two-point attempt, which he made and then made the following shot from the charity stripe to take the deficit down to nine points.
After the Johnson and-one, Antonio Williams traded buckets with Gareth Murray and Jaycee Hillsman before Troy Simmons hit a three to take the Plymouth lead up to 14.
Rocks showed good resilience to keep chipping away at the lead, getting it down to three going into the halftime break.
Fraser Malcolm with an impressive 12 points off the bench, shooting 5-7 from the field and 2-4 from downtown. Gareth Murray also scored 12 on 5-6 shooting with two three-pointers, playing every second of the first half. Rashad Hassan led the way for Plymouth with 15 points on 7-10 shooting.
With a better second-quarter performance under their belts, Glasgow will be looking to carry momentum over and topple the Patriots, but this wasn’t to be. With a couple of buckets here and there, the Rocks got it within one but Plymouth carried on the flame to get their lead back to five, and then ten, fourteen before closing out the third quarter of tonight’s match with a 14 point lead on Gareth Murray’s side.
About four minutes into the fourth segment of the match, Hillsman got the deficit down to single digits with a pair of free throws, taking his tally to nine points on the night, for the rest of the fourth he kept knocking down his shots and ended up with 16.
@JordanHarr1s with the REJECTION
https://t.co/5Z3hL2L9e2
https://t.co/xADP6wyODU#BritishBasketball pic.twitter.com/9h2VCOJrcT— British Basketball League (@BBLofficial) April 13, 2022
Tonight’s Glasgow Rocks’ scoring leader tonight was Fraser Malcolm with 25 points, pipping Jordan Johnson to the most points by one. Malcolm’s 25 came with four three-pointers, six twos, and a singular free throw.
Rocks got the margin down to 10 as the game drew to a close, there were no runs in the second half which looked promising, the shots were not dropping consistently tonight despite shooting 47% from behind the three-point line and 66% from inside it, equating to 60% from all open play shots, the Patriots just outplayed the guys tonight which makes the British Basketball League standings look like this; the Glen Luss Glasgow Rocks in 7th place with an 11-13 record on 22 points, matched with tonight’s opponents, the Plymouth Patriots who have one more loss than us, 22 points with an 11-14 record.
The Rocks’ next game is on April 17th, this Sunday coming and will feature our Rocks against currently a 14-9 Sheffield Sharks side away in Sheffield.
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