Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010

This is one of basketball's time-honored maxims: A team that allows 35 or more fourth-quarter points will probably lose that game more times than not.

Friday night's lone bj-league game followed this story line, with the visiting Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix securing a 113-90 victory over the Takamatsu Five Arrows. For Kazuo Nakamura's championship-caliber club, this included 37-fourth-quarter points against the cellar-dwelling Five Arrows.

Wendell White scored a game-best 39 points for the Phoenix (20-4). The veteran sharpshooter drained 6 of 11 3-pointers and canning 7 of 9 free-throw attempts. Teammate William Knight added 19 points, Limar Wilson scored 15, Johann Collins had 11 and Jermaine Green scored 10.

Hamamatsu's superior depth played a pivotal role in the win.

Case in point: No Phoenix player was on the court for more than 31 minutes.

Hamamatsu shot 55 percent (11-for-20) from 3-point range and 50.8 percent (31-for-61) from inside the 3-point arc.

For Takamatsu (8-18), Yu Okada scored a team-high 25 points in his return to the lineup after a one-game absence. Okada was 10-for-18 from the field, including 5-for-8 from 3-point range. Michael Gardener finished with 18 points and Satoshi Takeda and Shuichi Takada chipped in with 11 points apiece.

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