NUMBER crunching for Round 8 sees the tight race for the National Basketball League (NBL) scoring champion break open, a young star get his first taste of action, an ugly game from a New Zealand star, and a massive comeback from the Bullets.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cotton flexes his muscles\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The battle between Bryce Cotton<\/strong> and Melo Trimble<\/strong> in the scoring race has been neck and neck all year. Round 6 and 7 saw the scoring title separated by less than 1 point. But Round 8 saw the two stars match up against each other, with Cotton clearly winning the points. Melo Trimble had a poor weekend for his lofty standards, scoring eight points against Perth and 19 points against Illawarra, which saw his average drop to 22 points per game. Cotton scored 21 against Trimble\u2019s Taipans, and kept his consistence season rolling. Just 1.9 points now separates Cotton and Trimble from the top of the leader board, and we must ask the question if Trimble can recover?<\/p>\n Young star emerges<\/strong><\/p>\n Wani Swaka Lo Buluk<\/strong> debuted for Perth on the weekend, and at 17 years and 6 months old, he is the fifth\u00a0youngest ever player to score in the NBL. The others include Australian Boomers coach,\u00a0Andrej Lemanis\u00a0<\/strong>and NBL legend,\u00a0Shane Heal.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Youngest players to score in the NBL:<\/em><\/p>\n Sixteen years, four months: Andrej Lemanis, 1985<\/p>\n Sixteen years, five months: Cameron Dickinson<\/strong>, 1988<\/p>\n Seventeen years, one month: Daniel Egan,<\/strong> 1996<\/p>\n Seventeen years, three months: Mike McKay,\u00a0<\/strong>1983<\/p>\n Seventeen years, five months: Shane Heal, 1988<\/p>\n Seventeen years, six months: Wani Swaka Lo Buluk, 2018<\/p>\n Ugly game<\/strong><\/p>\n Corey Webster<\/strong> is a talented player, and an important cog in New Zealand\u2019s line-up. However, he has struggled with consistency. The weekend saw the ugly side of Brewer’s game. His 0-9 from the field was the third worst shooting game by any Breakers player.<\/p>\n Worst shooting games by Breakers players:<\/em><\/p>\n Zero from 11: Paul Henare<\/strong> vs 36ers, 2005<\/p>\n Zero from 10: Phill Jones<\/strong> vs Razorbacks, 2004<\/p>\n Zero from nine: Corey Webster vs Kings, 2018<\/p>\n Huge comeback\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The Brisbane Bullets pulled off two enormous victories against Melbourne United on the weekend. Their first victory of the round was especially significant, as the Bullets overcame the biggest three-quarter time deficit of any team this season to win on Saturday.<\/p>\n Lead at three-quarter time:<\/em><\/p>\n Eleven points – Brisbane Bullets vs United, Round 8<\/p>\n Nine points – Wildcats vs Breakers, Round 7<\/p>\n Five points – United vs Taipans, Round 5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NUMBER crunching for Round 8 sees the tight race for the National Basketball League (NBL) scoring champion break open, a young star get his first taste of action, an ugly game from a New Zealand star, and a massive comeback from the Bullets. Cotton flexes his muscles\u00a0 The battle between Bryce Cotton and Melo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[323,131,150,104,324,325,208,322],"class_list":["post-1358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nbl","tag-andrej-lemanis","tag-bryce-cotton","tag-corey-webster","tag-melo-trimble","tag-paul-henare","tag-phill-jones","tag-shane-heal","tag-wani-swaka-lo-buluk"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}