The long rest turned out to be exactly what the Singapore Slingers needed as they took home a 87-76 victory on the road against the Westports Malaysia Dragons in the first game of the Straits Cup. Now that they have the advantage of playing at home, the Slingers will have to pounce on the opportunity.
With the Formosa Dreamers scoring an important win against Hong Kong Easter and with the Wolf Warriors next on their schedule, Singapore has to rack up wins to stay in pace for the race to the second spot.
Right now the Dreamers are at 12-6 while the Slingers are at 11-7, heading into the final stretch of the elimination round.
John Fields and Xavier Alexander powered the offense for Singapore in their last game with 28 points each but the bigger advantage for the Slingers was their rebounding numbers as 29 huge ones compared to only eight for their counterparts Nnanna Egwu and Chris Eversley.
In that game, it looked like coach Neo Beng Siang picked his poised and decided that single coverage against Egwu will be enough. The big man got his fair share of buckets as he had 26 points in the game but he was deemed ineffective on the boards as he was playing mostly out of the shaded area.
With Westports Malaysia now knowing that their imports will have a tough time winning their respective matchups against Singapore with the exception of Jerran Young against Winston Shepard, the pressure is on their locals to help out for Game 2 of the Straits Cup.
