Trail of the Lion King

It had been a while since I’d gone along to the Jamsil Students Gymnasium so I thought I’d take in the mid-week game between SK Knights and Wongju Dongbu Promy. If this game had taken place last season then you’d have had the visitors nailed on for a win. They finished top of the standings whilst SK slugged it out at the bottom with local rivals Seoul Thunders to determine the top dog in Seoul as well as the accolade of being the second crappiest team in the country.

This year though, it’s all different. SK Knights are miles clear at the top whilst Wonju started the season with a dismal run. They’d picked up a bit recently though and a decent winning streak had moved them up to mid-table.

I jumped the queue at the ticket office, or at least I think I did. There wasn’t anyone waiting at a window that I think was designated for those people collecting pre-booked tickets. As a foreigner you usually get cut some slack and I was able to purchase a ticket for cash whilst giving the people behind the counter an additional opportunity to practice their English. It seems a fair trade-off to me.

I got a seat in the corner, second tier.

Despite Wonju’s current form they soon fell behind and were trailing 26-12 at the end of the first quarter. I thought that they were a little unlucky to be so far adrift as everything seemed to be dropping in for the hosts whilst a lot of the Wonju shots rolled around the rim before bouncing out. Even the dunks.

Wonju on the attack.

It got a bit better for the visitors as the game went on and they held their own in the second and third quarters, bringing the deficit down to three points at one stage. Julian Sensley was their star fella, rattling in twenty four points, whilst Richard Roby contributed five points during his brief time on court.

Julian Sensley and Courtney Sims.

Aaron Haynes was top scorer for SK with eighteen points whilst their second string foreigner Courtney Sims got a bit more game time than usual toward the end. He picked up eleven points in his twelve minutes of top-class goal-scrounging beneath the basket.

Aaron Haynes scores another one.

In the battle of the ‘Half-Koreans’ former Globetrotter Shanghai was his usual busy self, playing the entire game for Wonju whilst Kim Min Soo, who in a former life was an Argentinian known as Julian Fernadez, took home the Man of The Match award for his seventeen points.

The win kept SK clear at the top and halted Wonju’s rise up the table.

This entry was posted on February 12, 2013 at 11:30 am and is filed under Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.