The Season
Started
well but then everything went horribly wrong.
By round seven they had a 6-3 record and were going gangbusters behind
Patty Mills and Cameron Tragardh and The Cage was selling out as frequently as
hotcakes. Four straight losses had the
team falling a bit but made up with it with three wins in a row to be sitting
at a respectable 9-6 after round 13.
After that, the wheels fell off and it was a bloodbath. The Tigers lost six straight before their
next win and went 1-5 after that to finish a disappointing fourth last with an
11-17 record. The last twelve rounds of
the season had the team going 2-11 with fingers being pointed everywhere.
What went
right?
They had
five Dabster Award winners spread out between three players and for the first
half of the season Cameron Tragardh was looking MVP worthy. Patrick Mills brought along the hype and the
casual fan as the stadium had a record number of full houses. Liam Rush continued to grow and Ron Dorsey
did something in the second half after his horrid first part of the season.
What went
wrong?
It all
started in the pre-season as Daryl Corletto was unceremoniously dumped from the
team after they signed Mills, something I don’t think he has lost much sleep to
after winning the championship. The saga
did put a black mark on the club and especially Seamus McPeake. Continuing on with McPeake he also sacked
Ayinde Ubaka after a loss which garnered plenty of negative press. It was a stupid move for a guy who seems like
he doesn’t care about the people in the club and thankfully he has now been
separated from the team.
On the
court their second half was awful as new import Myron Allen tried his best but after
a few good games didn’t do much to light the court on fire. Tragardh went missing while Ron Dorsey didn’t
live up to his hype from last season.
Most
Valuable Player
Even though
he trailed off badly at the end of the season Cameron Tragardh was the main man
for the Tigers. He can score with the
best of them and Melbourne needed that.
He also showed that he could be a leader after being named team captain. He finished with an ER of 14.6 but was in the
league top ten for most of the season.
Targets
With
Tragardh defecting to Cairns and only Rush, Dorsey, Lucas Walker and Tom Greer
re-signed for the coming season this team is pretty much starting from
scratch. Unfortunately all of their
signed players are small forwards/sometime power forwards so the front office
is going to have to fill a lot of holes before the coming journey. Another unfortunate idea is that they are
going to have to play some of these players at power forward, meaning if they
don’t get a big body (maybe Luke Schenscher?) then the team is going to be very
small. As I have said with all the other
teams so far the Tigers are going to need a good import guard to get the
offence going and maybe a lights out shooting guard, whether import or
local. It’s pretty much getting any
talent that isn’t a small forward at this stage for Melbourne.
Next Season
Unknown at
the moment as they need to fill out most of the roster before that time. Losing Tragardh hurts but if they can get
some more talent and hopefully some height in their centre position then it
could be a good one. Right now I have no
idea what next season is going to be like for the Melbourne Tigers.
Grade
C
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