Emma Greenwood | November 21st, 2011
THE Blaze have removed the shackles from explosive swingman Chris Goulding, handing him a licence to shoot as he pleases.
While Adris DeLeon again snared the spotlight with a match-high 21 points in the Blaze's 87-75 win against Townsville at the Convention Centre on Saturday night, Goulding had his best game of the season with 12 points and five rebounds in a sparkling cameo.
The 23-year-old was slotted into the starting five early in the season while James Harvey recovered from a broken hand.
But coach Joey Wright admitted the move may have placed too much pressure on Goulding, given an increased focus on defence and team structures.
Removing some of those rules and giving Goulding a licence to shoot has freed him up to go on the kind of scoring streak that can change a match.
"I have to take some credit for screwing him up early in the year," Wright said.
"We probably asked him to do too many things early in the year and right now, at his career level, he needs to score.
"He needs to be able to shoot the ball whenever, wherever and we kind of gave that back to him the last couple of games and hopefully he'll continue on."
As a confidence player, Goulding is likely to thrive on Saturday's effort, although Wright joked the performance had probably already been magnified in his young charge's mind.
"I don't know what he finally shot (12 points at 56 per cent from the field) but he probably thinks he had 40 and went 20-of-20, so he's feeling pretty good right now," Wright said.
The win handed the Coast back-to-back victories for the first time this season and got their season record back to 3-3, with the Blaze feeling they have found their groove.
Part of their resurgence has been having multiple scoring threats, something Wright said was a goal.
"We're going to have some situations like we had (on Saturday) where Will (Hudson) and Tommy (Garlepp) and guys like that didn't have a big part in this game but they're going to have a big part in some games later," Wright said.
"That's the true test of how good you are, to have guys that sleep two or three games and then take over and be a force.
"We see what those guys do in training.
"We know that Gibbo (Adam Gibson) and Harvs (James Harvey) and Adris (DeLeon) and Wortho (Mark Worthington) and those guys are going to get it done.
"But the other guys will get it done when we need them and I thought (Goulding) did that (on Saturday)."
Last Modified on 24/11/2011 12:55
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