The Castec Rural Pioneers will play their final game of the home and away season tomorrow night as they take on the Ringwood Hawks at Wulanda Recreation and Convention Centre.
Heading into the final game of the season the Pioneers currently sit first on the ladder in the NBL1 South Conference with a record of 16-5.
If the Pioneers lose tomorrow night there is a chance of them losing the top spot to either the second placed Ballarat Miners or the third placed Sandringham Sabres if they win their games.
Ringwood currently sits 17th on the ladder with a record of 6-15 and are not in the best form, having lost their last 11 games.
Although their record and their form is not the best, Ringwood still has some dangerous players like Jonathan Lawton, who leads the team in points, assists, steals and three pointers.
This will be a player the Pioneers will need to stop as they have struggled to contain their opponents’ best players at times.
The return of the league’s scoring leader Nick Marshall will help provide some well-needed scoring for the team as they struggled last week and especially their last game against Melbourne where Akech Aliir carried most of the offensive load.
Speaking of Aliir, he is coming off a dominant weekend where he had back-to-back double doubles, scoring 30 points on Friday night then backing it up with a 35 point performance on Saturday night.
He will be a key player tomorrow night as Ringwood is not the best at covering the paint.
Head coach Richard Hill is positive that if his side plays well on Friday night they will come away with the victory and ladder lead.
“If we play well then we should win. We have to win to finish top and guarantee a top spot – we could fluke top spot but if we win then we are guaranteed so we are going to go win. If we don’t win then we don’t deserve to be top,” Hill said.
Hill will be looking for his side to improve in several areas after the loss in Melbourne last weekend, highlighting the fact he thought his side played well despite the tough circumstances they were in.
“There are always things to improve on, Melbourne play a different style of basketball than most other teams, but I was actually pretty pleased with the guys to be honest,” he said.
“It was our fourth game in eight days and they had only played one game in that period of time and we had come off a massive game the night before, so fortunately we won that because we would not be in a good situation if we didn’t.”
