{"id":2680,"date":"2019-02-20T15:43:32","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T05:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/basketball.draftcentral.com.au\/?p=2680"},"modified":"2019-02-20T15:47:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T05:47:41","slug":"victoria-goes-back-to-back-at-under-20-mens-national-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/victoria-goes-back-to-back-at-under-20-mens-national-championships\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria goes back-to-back at Under-20 Men&#8217;s national championships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>VICTORIA&#8217;S Under-20 Men were crowned national champions on Sunday for the second consecutive year after triumphing in their gold medal clash over Western Australia. Victoria&#8217;s Ivor Burge Men and Ivor Burge Women also medalled at the tournament, picking up silver in their competitions.<\/p>\n<p>An elite defensive effort set up Victoria&#8217;s 76-69 triumph over Western Australia in the gold medal clashh on Sunday afternoon. An emphasis was put on shutting down the West Australian&#8217;s impressive roster, including national junior team members <strong>Swaka Lo Buluk<\/strong> and <strong>Luke Travers<\/strong>, which Victoria did, but not without a struggle. <strong>Tyler Robertson<\/strong> (14 points) and <strong>Keli Leaupepe<\/strong> (15 and nine rebounds) both stood up in clutch moments to both hit the scoreboard and shut down the dangerous West Australian pair.<\/p>\n<p>With 26 points off the bench, including a second term spree from <strong>Kobe Williamson<\/strong> (10 points), Victoria had built a handy lead by half-time. Piece-by-piece the defensive strength of the reigning champions allowed opportunities for shooters to add scoreboard pressure up the other end. Robertson&#8217;s four treys set the tone early, while the inside-outside games of Leaupepe and <strong>Josh Bannan<\/strong> (12 points and 11 rebounds) made life difficult for their opposition. Western Australia threatened to steal the points at times with <strong>Kyle Bowen<\/strong> (22 points, 17 rebounds and six assists) simply dominating, but the overall consistency and strength of the Victorian side saw the team bring home the Jack Terrill Trophy.<\/p>\n<p>Victoria Under-20 Men&#8217;s head coach, <strong>Chris Anstey<\/strong> said after identifying some areas of improvement earlier in the tournament, the team had come together and put out its best performance in the decider.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was nice to continually get better over the course of the week,&#8221; he said. &#8220;There were a few flaws in what we were doing early and I thought that was our best game defensively and we were really sound. &#8220;I think Western Australia had an incredible tournament and we certainly knew how tough they were going to be. &#8220;But when it came down to it, our boys were used to playing on the bigger stage and we executed well, got over a few nerves early and the best game for the tournament was the one that mattered.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Victoria had a number of players who have now graduated from the junior pathways, with Leaupepe, Robertson, <strong>Sean Macdonald<\/strong>, <strong>Deng Dut<\/strong>, <strong>Josh Kunen<\/strong>, <strong>Oliver Hayes-Brown<\/strong> and <strong>Sam Taulapiu<\/strong> all multiple national championship winning players following their time as elite Victorian juniors.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2684\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2684\" style=\"width: 652px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.draftcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/02\/Victoria-South-Australia-Ivor-Burge-1024x683.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"652\" height=\"435\" class=\"size-large wp-image-2684\" srcset=\"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/02\/Victoria-South-Australia-Ivor-Burge-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/02\/Victoria-South-Australia-Ivor-Burge-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/02\/Victoria-South-Australia-Ivor-Burge-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/02\/Victoria-South-Australia-Ivor-Burge-128x85.jpeg 128w, https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/02\/Victoria-South-Australia-Ivor-Burge-32x21.jpeg 32w, https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/02\/Victoria-South-Australia-Ivor-Burge.jpeg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 652px) 100vw, 652px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2684\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pic: Basketball Victoria<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In the other men&#8217;s grades, South Australia defeated Victoria 85-76 with the winners&#8217; fast start the key to victory. South Australia lead 22-9 at the first change before Victoria hitback. Victorian shooter, <strong>Jake De La Motte<\/strong> sunk 30 points, while <strong>James Debetta<\/strong> had a massive 18 rebounds to go with his eight points, but South Australia ultimately proved too strong. <strong>Jordan Palmer<\/strong> was massive off the boards and up the offensive end with 24 points and 12 rebounds, while <strong>Keenan Georg-Dent<\/strong> was everywhere with 11 points and 13 rebounds for the winners. <strong>Zachary Georg-Dent<\/strong> scored 20 points, six rebounds and had six assists in a consistent effort across the match.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Victoria A finished sixth overall in the same division, and the Under-20 A Men finished seventh, with a win over the NBA Global Academy on the final day, 82-75.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VICTORIA&#8217;S Under-20 Men were crowned national champions on Sunday for the second consecutive year after triumphing in their gold medal clash over Western Australia. Victoria&#8217;s Ivor Burge Men and Ivor Burge Women also medalled at the tournament, picking up silver in their competitions. An elite defensive effort set up Victoria&#8217;s 76-69 triumph over Western Australia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":2681,"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":[877],"tags":[873,878,879,880,871,874,881,869,870,883,867,875,876,872,868,865,866,882],"class_list":["post-2680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-championships","tag-deng-dut","tag-jake-de-la-motte","tag-james-debetta","tag-jordan-palmer","tag-josh-bannan","tag-josh-kunen","tag-keenan-gerg-dent","tag-keli-leaupepe","tag-kobe-williamson","tag-kyle-bowen","tag-luke-travers","tag-oliver-hayes-brown","tag-sam-taulapiu","tag-sean-macdonald","tag-swaka-lo-buluk","tag-tyler-robertson","tag-victoria-under-20-mens-basketball","tag-zachary-georg-dent"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680","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\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}