The national basketball league grand final returns to Invercargill this afternoon for the first time in a decade, with the Southland Sharks hosting the defending champion Wellington Saints at ILT Stadium Southland. The game is scheduled to tip off at 3.09pm, and it is a rematch of last year’s decider, which the Saints won.
Southland earned the hosting rights the hard way, by finishing higher up the round robin table than Wellington. The Sharks came third on 16 wins and four losses, one place and one game clear of the fourth-placed Saints, who finished 15-5. Both teams then went through the bottom half of the playoff draw, and both have won every game since. Southland now sits at 18-4 overall and Wellington at 17-5.
The Sharks got there by beating the Tauranga Whai 96-81 in the eliminator and then the Canterbury Rams 84-74 in the semi-final, a game in which the American guard Caleb Asberry scored 26 points. Wellington accounted for the Otago Nuggets 94-81 before dismantling the minor premiers, the Auckland Tuatara, 112-69 in the other semi. That 43-point win was the heaviest beating handed out in the finals series and it has the Saints arriving in the deep south on a five-game winning streak.
Last year the two clubs met for the title in Wellington and the Saints won 88-83, taking a record-extending 13th championship and a first for head coach Aaron Young in his debut season in charge. Hyrum Harris was named grand final most valuable player after finishing with 20 points and 14 rebounds. Southland has not forgotten it.
“That feeling last year, leaving the court after we lost, it sucked. And I kid you not, right after that game, we were talking about coming back,” Asberry told the Southland Tribune after the semi-final.
There is a second storyline running underneath the game. Sharks head coach Jonathan Yim has confirmed this will be his last match in charge, ending a two-year stint that began when he was recruited from the United States, where he had worked with the Portland Trail Blazers as a coordinator and assistant coach.
“It’s going to be my last game at ILT Stadium,” Yim told the Southland Tribune last week. He also pointed to how far the club has come in that short time. “I can remember my first home game, which was against Manawatu last year, and we only had 850 fans. And to have a potential sellout in a Grand Final game for my last home game, I think it just really shows how far we’ve come.”
Only about 600 of the 3,600 tickets were left by the middle of last week, and the Southland Tribune has described the match as the biggest basketball game ever played in the city. The last grand final held in Invercargill was in 2016 and it did not involve the Sharks.
On paper, Wellington is the stronger side. The Saints led the league this season in points scored at 100.6 a game, field goal percentage at 50, assists at 25.2, steals at 9.4 and rebounding margin at plus 5.6, according to the league’s own grand final preview. They are the only team averaging triple figures. Through the finals they have lifted again, scoring 107.8 points a game while conceding 84.2.
The engine is Elijah Pepper, this season’s league MVP and leading scorer, who averaged 29.1 points, 5.4 rebounds, 4.7 assists and 2.6 steals a game and once put up 45 in a night. Around him, Carlin Davison has run the offence with 13.8 points, 6.8 rebounds and 7.3 assists a game, Akech Aliir has scored 16.3 a game at 59 percent from the floor and 43 percent from three, and Donte Ingram has added 14. Jordan Hunt gives them 11 points and close to six rebounds off the bench.
The complication for Wellington is Harris. The 2025 defensive player of the year and last year’s grand final MVP is listed as questionable with an ankle injury, which would take 9.8 points, 7.9 rebounds and 4.3 assists a game out of the rotation and force Young to reshuffle.
Southland’s answer is shooting and size. The Sharks were the best three-point shooting team in the competition at 37 percent and made the most of them at 12.4 a game, and they scored 95.8 points a game while giving up 87.4. Sam Timmins, named the league’s defensive player of the year, has been the anchor with 18.6 points and 10.9 rebounds a game at 57 percent from the field. Keylan Boone has contributed 17.3 points and 7.6 rebounds, Brayden Inger 13.3 points at 44 percent from long range, and Asberry has averaged 20.6 points through the finals.
The most improbable member of the Southland side is point guard Rylan Jones, who nearly did not play at all this year. After a serious adductor and core injury while playing in Greece and the surgery that followed, he had taken a coaching job at Texas A&M and had made peace with being done as a player. Yim kept ringing.
“I think I’m just going to coach,” Jones recalled telling him. Then he started joining in the scrimmages he was supposed to be running. “Something just kind of clicked, and I’m like, man, I’ve got to play again.”
His college team finished on 26 March. He flew to New Zealand on 29 March and was playing again by 10 April, after nearly a year out. Across 18 games he has averaged 16.1 points, 6.1 rebounds, 6.9 assists and 2.9 steals, finishing fourth in the league for assists and second for steals, and was voted fan MVP. He signs with a club in Slovakia once this is over.
The two clubs split their regular season meetings, Southland winning 104-90 on the back of 19 made threes and Wellington replying with a 119-94 win built inside the paint. A Saints win would make it 14 titles and back-to-back championships. A Sharks win would be their fourth and their first since 2018, in front of a full house, in the last game their coach will ever take.
Who do you think takes it this afternoon in Invercargill? Let us know in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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