Taipans Strike, Add to Melbourne's Pain in Thriller

The Cairns Taipans showed their fighting qualities and scoring punch to dig themselves out of a couple of holes on Thursday night to beat Melbourne United 81-77 on a career-best performance from Keanu Pinder.

United were looking to hit back from Sunday's loss also at John Cain Arena to the Tasmania JackJumpers and there were a couple of occasions they looked in a position that would be hard to see them lose from.

Melbourne led by 14 points midway through the third quarter but Cairns hit back to score the next 22 points to turn that into an eight-point lead just before three quarter-time.

United responded on the back of the efforts of Xavier Rathan-Mayes and Rayjon Tucker to lead by six midway through the fourth. Once more, Cairns answered with the next nine points to then hold on in a thrilling finish to beat Melbourne for the first time in the last 10 attempts.

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The win also improves the Taipans to 4-1 on the season in their best start since the regular season championship winning campaign of 2015 while United slips to 2-3.

Shannon Scott revelled in being given the keys to the Taipans in the absence of injured captain Tahjere McCall to deliver 19 points, nine assists and six rebounds.

He created a wonderful partnership with Pinder who scored a career-best 26 points for the Taipans to go with eight rebounds, three assists and two steals.

DJ Hogg hit the clutch free-throws and had 13 points for Cairns with Mirko Djeric delivering 11 points with two three-pointers, and Sam Waardenburg eight points, five rebounds and two blocks.

Taipans coach Adam Forde remained confident his team would make a run at some stage if they held firm, and came away happy with the fighting effort.

"Once we slowly started to ramp it up we got going a little bit, but the problem is I don’t want this to become a consistent thing," Forde said. 

"I don’t want to be down 10 every game and then decide to come out and play. We know with this team we have to do it defensively and then when the floodgates open up, they will open up and that 22-0 run was our floodgate moment tonight so I'm happy with the boys."

It will be a tough loss for Melbourne to take with Rathan-Mayes finishing with 21 points and six rebounds, Tucker 19 points and 10 rebounds, and Chris Goulding 16 points on 4/8 shooting from beyond the arc.

Melbourne coach Dean Vickerman will make sure in review before facing Sydney on Sunday his team understands what were, and what weren’t, good shots they took in the game.

"They went on two runs. I saw us get up 14 points and that's who we are right now though. We have such highs and such lows, and we saw it all in the one quarter there," Vickerman said.

"We actually found some good offence and found some ways to get Tuck downhill and for the ball to move a little bit more. Then they make their run and we've seen it a couple of times already this year, we need to be able to have something that's really solid for us to go to and understand. 

"There was a period there where we were trying to take on too much for ourselves and play a bit of hero ball. The process was terrible at times but we still made some shots, and we have to understand in our review that they weren’t good shots and we got lucky with some of those."

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Last minute saves from Pinder ? ?<br><br>Watch <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBL23?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBL23</a> live on ESPN via Kayo Sports and Foxtel <a href="https://t.co/OPVZonJt8k">pic.twitter.com/OPVZonJt8k</a></p>&mdash; The NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1583040437912162306?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 20, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Melbourne started strongly inside with buckets to David Barlow and Isaac Humphries, but then Cairns' bigs Sam Waardenburg and DJ Hogg stepped out to knock down three balls.

The Snakes turned that into an 8-0 run thanks to Keanu Pinder but United steadied thanks to triples from Chris Goulding and David Okwera. They closed the opening period with the last five points to go into quarter-time up 19-15.

United then turned that into 12-0 run with the first seven points of the second term to lead by 11 before Mirko Djeric steadied things for the Snakes with a three-pointer, and then three free-throws.

Shannon Scott and Hogg then caught fire for the Taipans to help them draw level forcing Dean Vickerman into a timeout. 

They went inside to Humphries immediately for a three-point play, and a three ball from Goulding and couple of buckets from Rayjon Tucker helped Melbourne lead 43-37 at the half.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">CG43 is warming uppp ?<br><br>Watch <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBL23?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBL23</a> live on ESPN via Kayo Sports and Foxtel <a href="https://t.co/YUChV9MHZn">pic.twitter.com/YUChV9MHZn</a></p>&mdash; The NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1583023763678863362?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 20, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

United were going at 50 per cent from the field at the half opposed to 36 per cent from Cairns with both teams struggling from deep with Melbourne going at 4/13, and the Taipans 4/14.

Melbourne opened up the second half with a 10-2 run including three-pointers from Xavier Rathan-Mayes and Goulding, and a couple of more baskets to Tucker.

Things were slipping away from Cairns, but they responded to an Adam Forde timeout by scoring the next nine points with Scott producing five of them, and then finding Pinder and Djeric for the others.

Pinder scored again with a nice move to the rack to make it 11 straight points and they weren’t done. Scott knocked down a long ball, then threw up an alley-oop to Pinder and it was a 16-0 run with Cairns up two.

Majok Deng then hit a contested three ball to make it 20 straight Taipans points and Pinder made it 22, and they took a four-point edge into three quarter-time.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Keanu took FLIGHT ??<br><br>Watch <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBL23?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBL23</a> live on ESPN via Kayo Sports and Foxtel <a href="https://t.co/YUBeWTVn2i">pic.twitter.com/YUBeWTVn2i</a></p>&mdash; The NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1583034220456210433?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 20, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

It was Rathan-Mayes and Tucker who combined to turn the tide to start the fourth as they scored all of Melbourne's 10 points in a 10-2 run. That gave the home side back the momentum and they turned it into a six-point lead with six minutes on the clock.

However, once more the Snakes refused to lie down. Scott and Pinder inspired another fightback with seven straight points to see them nab the lead with two minutes to play.

They still had that one-point lead with 18.5 seconds left and Melbourne had the ball out of a timeout. Goulding appeared rolling to the basket but Pinder knocked it out of his hands giving the Taipans possession again where Hogg was fouled, and made two with 7.2 seconds left.

United had one more chance and Hogg fouled a three-point shooting Tucker. He needed to make all three but missed the first and third which saw Cairns hold on for the drought breaking win over Melbourne.

Both teams will be back in action on Sunday with the Taipans first up hosting the New Zealand Breakers before United looks for a measure of revenge back home to the Sydney Kings.

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL ROUND 4

MELBOURNE UNITED 77 (Rathan-Mayes 21, Tucker 19, Goulding 16)

CAIRNS TAIPANS 81 (Pinder 26, Scott 19, Hogg 13)

BOX SCORE