A tough second week, and lots to learn.
Mike Jones is still to arrive, Ty Alabakis is still out injured, and to add insult to injury (or is it injury to insult) Tim Kruge rolled his ankle in the first quarter of the Suns game on Friday night. To his credit he played on as best he could, but by the time Saturday night came around it was even worse.
We have a very young team, and in terms of SBL experience not a lot of depth. Looking at the result of Saturday nights game for example, if not for the exceptional play of youngsters Friend and Balcombe (top scorers with 24 and 20 points) things could have been much worse.
In specific Friday night’s game started well. We had a few lapses in the first half, however the final few minutes of the second quarter saw some major defensive lapses. In particular players double teaming guards out of a zone and opening up the second guard for easy shots was baffling. It’s not something we have ever practiced, it’s not an option for us and for obvious reason. We went from a hard fought lead to level, and let them take the momentum.
The second half they carried that momentum. It became a war of attrition, with our limited depth being exposed. I made a rookie mistake and put Jon Moon back in the game with 5 fouls (I thought he was on 4) and he fouled out in the third. Overall it combined for a second half to forget and a poor game.
Saturday night we knew wouldn’t be any easier, and on top of the issues noted above Andrew McLennan was also unavailable. I tried to go to our bench in short bursts to rest the starters, but with Tim unable to defend and not asserting himself on offense we had to go much deeper than I would have liked. Don’t get me wrong I’m the first person to say we should be giving the younger players a go, exposing them to SBL basketball. But it’s not how you win games.
To the credit of the team, we never gave in and played a strong game. Of course the eventual 27 point margin is not ideal but it was pleasing to see effort from the younger players. Wanneroo executed well as was expected, especially from a team where the core has been together so long.
We will regroup and work hard from here. We have a tough schedule coming up, with Tigers (H), Magic (A), Cougars (H) and Lightning (A). At least these are all single games, so we will hopefully have Mike and Ty available for at least half of these games. Of course it will take time for them to fit in also, but with a 26 game season and the team already 0-3 we don’t have a lot of time for those luxuries.
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