South Spotlight | Sabres stars fire in win over Pioneers

Featured image: Mitchell Barlow

The Sandringham Sabres at full strength showed that there's plenty of life left in their NBL1 South championship defence with Kyle Adnam and Malith Machar back for a double this weekend after Sunday's 110-97 win over the Mount Gambier Pioneers.

When Adnam went for a short stint in the NZ NBL and Machar was sidelined at the same time and even Dane Pineau missed a couple of games, suddenly the Sabres were just hanging on for dear life.

But with those three back in the line-up and with Elliott Brown playing with the most confidence of his career and joining Melbourne United NBL forward Kyle Bowen, it's quite the line-up.

They showed what they were capable of with a dominant road win on Saturday against Geelong United ahead of hosting the Pioneers at Southern Basketball Stadium on Sunday.

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Mount Gambier have also welcomed back captain Alex Mudronja this weekend and they beat the Knox Raiders in a high-scoring thriller on Saturday night to take some momentum into the clash with Sandringham.

The Sabres scored the first 10 points of the game and even though it was just a two-point lead by half-time, the reigning champs took over in the season half to build a 26-point lead before winning by 13 and improving to 4-4 as a result with the Pioneers now 3-5.

With their troops back, Sandringham completed a double-win weekend in style with Malith Machar top-scoring with 24 points, three rebounds and three steals including hitting 3/5 from behind the three-point line.

His Melbourne United NBL26 teammate Kyle Bowen also had 23 points, 10 rebounds and five assists on 10/17 shooting with Elliott Brown adding 18 points, five boards and five assists with 6/9 field goal shooting and going 5/5 at the free-throw line.

CJ Asuncion-Byrd also had 12 points and two assists, Dane Pineau 12 points, 13 rebounds and two steals, and Kyle Adnam 11 points, five boards and five assists.

Mount Gambier couldn’t quite back up their stunning win the night before over the Knox Raiders to now be 3-5 on the season despite having six players that all scored between 12 and 20 points in the game.

Scott Telfer led the way with 20 points with three rebounds and three steals with Alex Mudronja having made his return this weekend and providing 19 points and two boards with 3/6 three-point shooting.

Elijah Saifaleupolu added 17 points on 6/9 shooting from the field and 3/4 from downtown with Lucas Gordon contributing 15 points, 10 rebounds, two assists, two steals and two blocks.

Collin Moore provided 16 points and four rebounds while Ngor Manyang had 10 points in the first period and 12 for the game with two assists.

Both teams had played the previous night with the Sabres winning big over Geelong and Mount Gambier winning a thriller over Knox, and they both played out a blistering opening quarter combining for 62 points.

It was a game of momentum swings too with the Sabres scoring the game's first 10 points before the Pioneers hitting the next seven, and by quarter-time it was Sandringham leading 32-30.

The reigning champs were shooting 63 per cent from the field along with going 10/14 at the foul line with Mount Gambier also shooting 52 per cent but only managing 4/4 at the stripe.

Sandringham were able to keep up their scoring pace with another 30 points in the second term as the lead got out to 18 points as a result with all their stars stepping up.

By half-time, Kyle Adnam, Kyle Bowen and Elliott Brown all had 11 points with Malith Machar adding 10, and that had the Sabres leading 62-44 by the half on shooting 59 per cent to 42, and going 14/18 from the foul line to 6/6.

The Sabres continued to be having their way at the offensive end and pushed their advantage out to 26 points in the third quarter and by three quarter-time after another 28-25 term, they were leading 90-69.

Both Machar and Bowen were up to 19 points on the back of being Melbourne United teammates in NBL26 before it was a 26-point lead again in the fourth quarter before the Pioneers did make a late run to cut the final margin for Sandringham to 13.

The Pioneers are back home now on Friday night to play host to the Hobart Chargers while the Sabres are away to the Casey Cavaliers on Saturday.

NBL1 SOUTH 2026 SEASON | ROUND 5

SANDRINGHAM SABRES 112 (Machar 24, Bowen 23, Brown 18)

MOUNT GAMBIER PIONEERS 99 (Telfer 20, Mudronja 19, Saifaleupolu 17)