2021 Women’s Champions – Southern Tigers
The Southern Tigers have held on with a bunch of clutch plays as they won the inaugural NBL1 Central Womens 87-77 over the North Adelaide Rockets at the St Clair Recreation Centre.
The X-Factor for the Tigers in Bianca McCalop started with two triples and along with Jemma Thacker pushed them out to a 10-0 start. Tia Bails then drained a triple before Morgan Yaeger got going followed by a Thacker triple for an 18-5 start. With five straight triples to the Tigers it took Jess Good with two triples in a row to snap the momentum, but veteran Tara Dodman drained another triple to leave both teams with ten triples in the opening stanza as it stood 29-22 with the Tigers up at quarter time.
2021 Men’s Champions – North Adelaide Rockets
The North Adelaide Rockets ended a 15-year drought in the Mens as they stunned in the finals series and in the NBL1 Central Mens Champiosnhip decider with an incredible fairy-tale finish 72-87 over the Norwood Flames at the St Clair Recreation Centre.
Sunday Dech set the Rockets going with a couple of big buckets early with a triple then putback two with the Rockets opening a 2-11 run with CJ “Turnage-nator” Turnage guarded closely by Dech; Tobias Dowdell off to an incredible start with 5 points of his own. Anthony Green hit back for the Flames with a thunderous two-handed slam but Dowdell then added another two with Jack McVeigh dropping his first bomb of the night to make it 6-16 and timeout to Mike Malat and the Flames. Green flushed another one down before Jimma Dau hit back for the Rockets with a triple followed by former Rocker Ray Harding at the other end with a triple along with Turnage. Verle “The Red Tornado” Williams found Dowdell with the no-look pass and Tobias flushed it down one handed for an explosive opener 16-25 after one.
