Satria Muda: “Be ready Slingers, our fans are crazy.”

By Jan Lin/Red Hoops. Photos by Lai Jun Wei/Red Hoops.

Like a true “sixth man”, the Satria Muda home crowd paralysed the Brunei Barracudas last weekend with their vociferous support. The fans lifted the team from a crushing 96-72 defeat by the Slingers in Singapore a fortnight ago to mow down the Barracudas 97-62 last weekend.

“I think our home crowd support will be the X factor for us,” said Satria Muda’s head coach Fictor Roring as his team takes on current ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) leader Singapore Slingers this weekend at home.

Though the Slingers may be coming off a disastrous outing in Philippines last weekend, where they were humbled 70-53 by the Patriots, the visitors may find comfort in the Satria Muda’s high appraisal of them.

“The speed and accuracy of the Slingers are just fantastic,” Roring said after the first Satria Muda-Slingers tie in Singapore. “In the first half alone, the 3-points shooting was 86 percent, I cannot say anything! It’s hard to beat a team with a percentage like that.”

By the end of the fourth quarter, the Slingers recorded an impressive 63% shooting from the field and 60% from beyond the 3-point arc.

“We knew the Slingers have good shooters but their performance was beyond my thinking!” Roring said. “We knew they are quick, we wanted to stop them but we couldn’t, that’s the problem. We couldn’t stop the three-points shooting and we couldn’t stop the fast break.”

He continued: “And maybe my players were too excited as well. When the Slingers started leading more than ten points, the players panicked and couldn’t organise our defense, they just couldn’t settle down.”

“Yes they just kept scoring!” Satria Muda’s American import Alexander Hartman exclaimed in agreement. “We tried to restart, one step at a time, one play at a time, we just couldn’t do it. They just kept scoring and kept scoring, and that gets very frustrating on your defense.”

He shared: “Then you start to gamble, start to go for steals, try to do a lot of things and it ends up still not working for you because they keep scoring. It just compiled and became too much for us to come back from and when that happens, you don’t play your game, you play their game.”

Hartman is spearheading the pack of top scorers in the ABL with 108 points though about half of that was chalked up over the last two games – 28 points against the Slingers and 23 points against the Barracudas. Slingers’ Michael LeBlanc is right behind him with 104 points.

“I’ve never seen in my career a team shooting over 60 percent from threes. Usually teams shoot 30 to 40 percent and that’s a good game,” Hartman said. “We will have to work on our defense and on our outside pressure. They can score a whole lot from outside the paint.”

Hartman also believed that their offense “will come when [they] get on [their] home court” as he issued a tongue-in-cheek warning to the traveling Slingers. He said: “Be ready man, our fans are crazy.”

“Our fans are right on the court,” Hartman added as he described their 4,000-seating capacity home ground, The BritAma Arena, in Kelapa Gading. “The whole time the crowd will heckle and they have intercom, they yell at us. We’ve got really, really good fans support.”

“I’ll be talking a little about beating Singapore on the radio before the game and they will get real excited,” said Hartman with a mischievous grin. “It’s going to be a great game, I don’t think it’s going to be a blow out by any means. Hopefully we will play our game this time.”

The Satria Muda-Slingers ABL game will tip-off at 3pm (Jakarta time) at The Britama Arena Sportsmall in Kelapa Gading. Call 021-93582408/021-6338139 or visit Kelapa Gading Sport Mall’s ticket office for the tickets.

Categories: Satria Muda , Slingers