{"id":8769,"date":"2019-09-19T15:54:49","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T05:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/basketball.draftcentral.com.au\/?p=8769"},"modified":"2019-09-19T15:54:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T05:54:49","slug":"muvjbl-u18-boys-vc-preview-grand-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/muvjbl-u18-boys-vc-preview-grand-final\/","title":{"rendered":"MUVJBL U18 Boys VC preview: Grand Final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>THE final match-up in the Melbourne United Victorian Junior Basketball League (MUVJBL) Under-18 Boys Championship Division kicks off this week with the Bulleen Boomers coming up against the Melbourne Tigers at State Basketball Centre.<\/p>\n<p>Bulleen opened their finals&#8217; series with a four point loss against Nunawading (50-46), while Melbourne stood firm over Diamond Valley with a 66-53 victory. Both teams advanced to the semi-finals, which saw Melbourne roll over Dandenong (75-65) and Bulleen responding big against the Keilor Thunder (72-42). Last week, both sides cemented their spots for the big dance as Melbourne snared a 60-66 win over their second top-four side in Nunawading and Bulleen picked up a second consecutive 30-point victory to crush finals favourites, Kilsyth (45-75). They both face their biggest challenge this week, with Melbourne presenting comfortably the against top four sides and Bulleen picking up stellar form at the right time.<\/p>\n<p>NBA Global Academy player, <strong>Joshua Giddey<\/strong>, has sparked the biggest revival to Melbourne&#8217;s season. Besides averaging 19.8 points per game (PPG) from four outings and 25 and 27 points in his last two games, the 2021 prospect could also be NBA bound. Giddey&#8217;s efforts at the FIBA Under-17 Oceania Championship led Australia to a gold medal, where he averaged 16.4 points, 7.4 rebounds and five assists per game. He has been accompanied well by <strong>Patrick Twigg <\/strong>(11.4) this season, who has been an important mainstay for the Tigers, closely followed by <strong>Jordan Adams <\/strong>(10.4) with 11 and 12 outings respectively.<\/p>\n<p>For the Boomers, <strong>Owen Foxwell <\/strong>has been standout with 15.1 PPG from 12 outings. In Bulleen&#8217;s last two hit-outs, Foxwell stepped up to record back to back 20-point games, while top-20 counterpart <strong>Anthony Dell&#8217;Orso <\/strong>slowed with six and nine.<br \/>\nIn their last outing against each other, Bulleen walked away decisive victors (41-70). Dell&#8217;Orso and <strong>Thomas Giannatos <\/strong>stood up to record 18 and 12 points respectively, while Adams held down the fort for Melbourne with 18 of his own. In the rematch, Giddey&#8217;s return is likely to shake up Bulleen unfaultable fortnight, as the State Basketball Centre prepares to host the game of the year this Friday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE final match-up in the Melbourne United Victorian Junior Basketball League (MUVJBL) Under-18 Boys Championship Division kicks off this week with the Bulleen Boomers coming up against the Melbourne Tigers at State Basketball Centre. Bulleen opened their finals&#8217; series with a four point loss against Nunawading (50-46), while Melbourne stood firm over Diamond Valley with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":3593,"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":[16,12],"tags":[1283,436,530,963,430,1508],"class_list":["post-8769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u18-boys","category-vjbl-boys","tag-anthony-dellorso","tag-jordan-adams","tag-joshua-giddey","tag-owen-foxwell","tag-patrick-twigg","tag-thomas-giannatos"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8769","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}