Celts Fall Short: Indiana 104- Boston 100

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

	The C's played well this afternoon, and were within a point of
the Pacers (100-99) with a minute to go (off some very strong play
down the stretch from Kenny Anderson).  The Celts could never quite
get over the hump to take the lead, and the Pacers did their usual
extremely good job from the free throw line.  Although Kenny played
well down the stretch, he appeared to be favoring his injured knee,
especially in the 4th quarter.

	As usual (at least in the games I've seen) the Pacers starting
5 were marvelous.  They picked the Celts defense apart at the start of
the game, especially finding Dale Davis for any number of easy
baskets.  The Pacers took leads at 16-10 and 24-12.  As L.B. removed
his starters from the court, the Pacers offensive efficiency began to
drop and the Celts were able to get back into the game.  A three by
Dana Barros, that dropped through the hoop as the horn ending the
period sounded made the score 29-21.

	As usual (at least in the games I've seen) the Pacers backups
seems to be totally incompetent.  The Celts opened the 2nd with a 9-2
run to pull to within 2 at 32-30.  Bird put most of his starters in,
and Indy regained their equilibrium,as they pushed the lead back up to
49-42.  But the Celts ended the quarter with a 9-2 run to take a 53-51
lead going into the 2nd half.

	Once again, with the starters in the Pacer's offense roared
into high gear.  The Celts kept up for a little while, but the Pacers
retook the lead and were able to push it up to double digits at 83-73,
with about 2 minutes to go in the period.  The Celts once again began
to come back as Bird pulled his starters as the scored the last 4 to
make the score 83-77 at the end of the quarter.

	The Celts continued their dominance of the Pacer's second
string.  They outscored Indiana 11-2 at the start of the 4th to take a
short-lived 88-85 lead.  As Bird put his starters back in, the Pacers
began to revive.  The Pacers went on a 9-0 run (which probably won the
game for them).   With 5:00 left in the game, the Pacers led 94-88.
The Celts tightened their defense, and Kenny Anderson heated up on
offense.  Kenny scored 2 straight baskets to pull the Celts to within
2 (94-92, 3:43 left).  The Celts got another jumper from Anderson to
pull to within a point at 98-97.  Smits hit a hook shot and Anderson
came back with another driving hoop to pull the Celts to within a
point again at 100-99.   On the next play, Miller ran off a Smits
screen and grabbed Smits arm on the way by dragging him into Knight.
The dupe.... er, mark....I mean, the ref called the foul on Travis,
Smits hit the free throws to put the Pacers up by 3 (102-99 .35 left).
Kenny finally missed a shot on the next play, Travis got the bound and
had a good chance to put the ball back, but missed too.  The Celts
fouled the right guy on the next play, Dale Davis, but he hit both
free throws to seal the win for the Pacers.  The final was 104-100.

	Once again the Celts shot a respectable .470, but allowed the
Pacers to shoot at a torrid .551 pace.  The Celts gave up some easy
baskets due to the press, but they didn't get the usual return. They
caused 17 Pacer's turnovers, and worse committed 19 of their own.  The
only saving grace was the Celts 20-10 dominance of the offensive
boards.  

Lineups: 
Celts Anderson, Mercer, Minor, Walker, DeClercq
Pacers: Jackson, Miller, Mullen, D. Davis, Smits

Players:
Anderson.  After a couple of weak shooting games, Kenny was hitting
(7-13) and dishing (12 assists, 4 turnovers).  He was great down the
stretch, scoring 9 points (out of the Celts last 12), pretty easily
driving on Jackson, or pulling up.  The Pacers tried posting him with
pretty good success in the 3rd quarter.

Walker: Toine's quietest game in a long time.  He got tagged for his
3rd foul relatively early in the 2nd quarter (and threw a fit and got
called for a technical).  Pitino kept him out of the last 8 minutes or
so for the 2nd quarter.   Once again, Toine had a decent shooting
night (7-15) and scored 15 points and 8 boards in 27 minutes.

Mercer: Made some good plays, but didn't get many open jumpers in the
game.  He shot 6-13 and had 7 boards.  16 points in 43 minutes.

DeClercq: played 35 minutes and had just 2 fouls.  He played excellent
defense on Smits.  But, he fumbled a number of passes ( especially
from Anderson) which led to 5 turnovers.  More damaging, he probably
should have scored 8-10 points of those passes.  he did score 12,
picked up 12 points and had 8 boards and 3 steals.   Smits only took 7
shots in the game (most against Travis) and had 4 turnovers of his
own.

Minor: poor shooting game at 1-6.  He kept getting the ball to deep
under the basket, and putting up weak shots.  He did have 4 boards, 5
points and 2 steals in 24 minutes.

McCarty: Played with a lot of aggression, but not much judgement.  He
was 0-3 on threes, and was 3-11 overall.  He did have 4 boards and 3
steals in his 21 minutes.

Barros: He was hitting his shots again tonight.  He was 3-5, had 9
points, and 2 assists in 15 minutes.  

Bowen: I guess that Pitino didn't have a pressing defensive
assignments tonight.  He played just 14 minutes and scored 8 points.

Knight: Travis played another solid game tonight.  He got 28 minutes,
scored 12 points, and had 6 boards (5 offensive) in 28 minutes.  He
and DeClercq were in the game together for substantial periods of
time, and they played pretty well together, especially on the
offensive boards.

Edney, Pervis, Jones: DNP

Coaching: I guess Rick would have to be relatively happy about this
game.  The only real negative I can see, is that the game was
definitely played at the Celtics tempo, but they didn't cause many
turnovers and they committed far too many of their own.  Meanwhile,
they gave up a lot of easy baskets (Dale Davis scored 22 in the game,
most off of easy lay-ups).  The pressure defense was an invitation to
the Pacers first string.

The Celts are now 29-32 on the season.  They host the Hawks this
Wednesday

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.com