JackJumpers make statement with big win over United

The Tasmania JackJumpers heeded the call from their coach to rediscover their best basketball in the run to the NBL finals with a commanding 107-86 home win against the league-leading Melbourne United.

The JackJumpers came into the game at a sold out MyState Bank Arena having lost their last two, four of the last five and six of the past eight despite remaining in third position.

Having re-signed during the week, Roth had called on his team to rediscover their identity if they wanted to achieve anything still in NBL24.

They sure made quite the statement on Friday night against the runaway league-leaders, taking full advantage of a Melbourne team missing Shea Ili and Jo Lual-Acuil.

That was also following United making a flying start to lead 11-1 after the opening three minutes of the contest with Ian Clark (15 points) and Chris Goulding (16) getting going.

Tasmania soon steadied and led 24-22 by quarter-time and then dominated the contest from there. The combination of continuing to play on the road, and missing two key starters catching up with Melbourne.

The game was a fifth straight on the road for United while the Australian Open occupies John Cain Arena.

The absence of their two stars was then heavily felt as Jordon Crawford (25 points, five assists) dominated for Tasmania without having Ili pestering him.

Lual-Acuil's size and rim protection was sorely missed especially when Next Star Ariel Hukporti already had four fouls by the third quarter.

It was to the JackJumpers' credit that they made United struggle as they opened up a 54-44 lead by the half-time break before building an advantage as big as 26 and winning by 21.

The win improves the JackJumpers to 12-11 in third place with Jack McVeigh adding 23 points on 4-of-6 three-point shooting.

Three blocks from Will Magnay in just 10 minutes showed how important a rim protector he is. Tasmania outscored United by 16 points with Magnay on the court.

Anthony Drmic added 16 points and Marcus Lee 13 to go with 10 rebounds.

Roth was rightfully delighted with the bounce back performance.

"Really happy obviously to get a win in this building but it's still a long way to go here with a lot of tough games ahead of us," he said.

"We'll see if we can build some momentum out of this now and confidence is a huge thing, and when you have it it's a wonderful thing.

"While this group might not be as confident as you'd like them to be, they are all about doing the right things and I'm happy for them to get a game like this across the board."

Melbourne remains clear in top spot despite the loss at 16-6 as they struggled shooting from deep going 7-of-27 while being outrebounded by 20 with the JackJumpers having 20 offensive boards for 24 second chance points.

United coach Dean Vickerman wasn’t interested in excusing his team's performance.

"We'll never accept losing by 20 against anyone whatever team we put on the floor," he said.

"We want to be competitive and I don't accept Shea and Jo not being here at all.

"We went and beat New Zealand with this team that we had on the floor tonight, we just weren’t good enough."

HUNGRY JACKS NBL ROUND 16

TASMANIA JACKJUMPERS 107 (Crawford 25, McVeigh 23, Drmic 16)
MELBOURNE UNITED 86 (Goulding 16, Clark 15, Hukporti 13)

BOX SCORE