BBL Championship: Cheshire Jets 68 Sheffield Sharks 66

Feb 27 2011 by Alec Doyle, Chester Chronicle

A THRILLING finale saw the Jets emerge victorious and claim the head-to-head over the Sharks with a rare good call from the officials at the Northgate Arena.

Another close game took place tonight and the Jets led with one second on the clock when the Sharks, desperate to take the game into overtime and revive their own title ambitions, got involved in a mass of humanity tumbling inside the Jets key in the final second which left the whole arena expecting two free-throws for Sheffield before the buzzer.

But on a night where the referees failed to cover themselves in glory with a number of calls that were at best doubtful, they did manage to spot that the tumble was sparked not by a Jets player, but a Shark pulling down on a teammate.

That allowed the clock to hit zero and give the Jets their third consecutive win, lifting them back up to third.

It was a tough game which the officials failed to control as they gave fouls that left players, coaches and fans scratching their heads while at the same time allowing Mike Tuck, Paul Williams and Olu Babalola free reign to beat Matt Schneck down.

The Wisconsin powerhouse, in his second game back for the Jets, refused to back down and while his nine-points may point to the tactic having some success, the Sharks failed to stop his teammates as the Jets delivered one of their most well-rounded scoring performances of the campaign.

While the Sharks relied on the always impressive Steve Dagostino from deep and Marcus Stout scoring inside, The Jets could point to four players - Colin O'Reilly (17), Jeremy Bell (16), Quemont Greer (13 and Gareth Murray (10) who all hit double figures and capitalised on the Sharks preoccupation with Schneck.

Add to that the fact the Jets defence finally looked restored after months of leaking and patching up and you can see that Paul Smith's side are returning to form at the perfect moment.

In truth the game could even have been an easy Jets victory, had they not surrendered the third quarter and missed nine of their 23 free-throws.

But afterwards head coach Smith was full of praise for his side: "It was one of the more physical basketball games you will see.

"I think a few people will go away and criticise the refs but they let us play and I guess we felt a bit hard done to especially in that third quarter so if there was a call to be made in the last second maybe that evened it out a bit.

"The guys showed a lot of heart, not an awful lot of fluidity on offense but the Sharks were very good defensively. Their big guys are a little bigger than us but our guys have got that footspeed and quickness so we're happy to go man to man and attack them.

"The team is together, we have all our personnel, we have no injuries and results are going for us elsewhere. We feel pretty good at the minute. We have a lot of double headers coming up but I think everybody's got a lot of games coming up and we've done more conditioning work than we ever have before so with a seven-man rotation hopefully that will stand us in good stead."