Loss vs Kazakhstan U21: 94-111
I've probably never celebrated a loss like this. Yea it would have been great if we won, but we lost by 17. That means we are through to the next round, with a +8 point difference over Kazakhstan U21! Yipee!!!!
Personal note to self, I'm never trusting isolation tactics again. They really failed me hard this season. If you were watching the game, you'd realize the game was more lopsided than the score suggested. We were down by almost 30 after the third. Man, how embarrassing was that. The worse thing was I didn't even know what went wrong. Our offense was going as intended, we were getting the ball to Goh Kwang Jia, who was our best offensive player. But he was missing almost everything. To make matters worse, he kept being guarded by a 8k salary player (with how well he shot, I'm pretty sure it's not all defense). Some ridiculous plays happened, like one of our best inside shot players missing a dunk (that's crazy alright, because you only miss dunks if your IS is not high enough). Our players were also missing a lot of open looks while our opponents were getting a lot of open looks (which they scored from).
Regardless, we made it, thanks to garbage time (ironic with how I hate garbage time but it finally benefitted me). We basically shaved the lead from 31 to 14 with a little over 3 minutes to go. That's when our opponents decided things were a bit too dangerous and put their starters back in. Thankfully, our boys kept the score close, preventing them from running away with the win.
Well, I can't think of a season where we could get any luckier, but we've finally ended our trophy drought! Hopefully this is the start to many more trophies to come!