ABL 2019-20: Preview Analysis of Mono Vampires against KL Dragons
Our final game before the Chinese New Year Break will be our second road game against the current league leaders, the Mono Vampire Basketball Club. The team from Thailand are standing tall at the peak with a 6-2 record and are currently unbeaten at home.
Mono Vampire currently have the largest points scored (90.9) and points allowed (79.9) differential in the league (11.0) and currently have the league’s second best defense and rebounding numbers.
Earlier this season, we took a narrow 73-79 loss to Mono Vampire without the services of Loh Shee Fai, Kuek Tian Yuan, Chin Cheng Wah, Nicholas Tem Zhen Jie and Teoh Yi Kang who were away on National Team duty.
Since our previous encounter, Mono Vampire has replaced Ryan Watkins with 30 year old 6 ft 9 American center, Mike Morrison. Morrison joins the team with an impressive resume, playing in several countries across Europe including Greece, Lithuania, Germany and Belgium.
Morrison was most notably part of the inaugural FIBA Europe Cup championship team of Fraport Skyliners Frankfurt in 2016. Morrison will make his ABL debut against us.
The team’s resident import Mike Singletary has been their best performer so far, averaging 20.8 points, 10.1 rebounds and 3.3 assists with an efficient shooting clip of 46% overall and 39% from beyond the arc. In our previous encounter, Singletary scored 28 points and drained five three pointers to send us to our first defeat of the season.
Before the game, Head Coach Jamie Pearlman says, “They’re a really tough team across the floor, they’ve got so much depth and size. Going to the game without Simeon Lepichev will make it harder but we’ll go in there and battle, keep it close, and down the stretch, you never know, anything can happen.”
The game will take place on Wednesday, the 15th of January 2020 at 7.00 PM Malaysia time at Stadium 29, Nonthaburi, Thailand.
Fans can catch the game live on ASEAN Basketball League’s YouTube and Facebook pages as well as Astro Arena.
