Perth Wildcats coach Rob Beveridge wasn’t happy with his team's rebounding, fouls committed, shooting and defending the on-ball screen in Tuesday's loss and all must turnaround on Friday.
The Wildcats led the entire first half after the first four minutes of the opening quarter in Tuesday's Game 2 of the NBL Grand Final series in Wollongong and held an advantage of as much as seven points, but things turned around in the second half.
The Hawks won 75-63 to force a deciding Game 3 this Friday night at Challenge Stadium. The crowd was incredible at the Sand Pit with 5786 turning out largely in support of the Hawks to create the atmosphere, but Beveridge saw things from his team he knows they must improve.
Cameron Tragardh bounced back from just five points in Game 1 in Perth to score 28 and put the Hawks on his back to lead them to victory.
Wollongong also out-rebounded the 'Cats, which Beveridge found unacceptable and he knows if that happens again the championship won't be coming to Perth.
"I said previous that this was a free-hit to an extent and I felt a lot more pressure at home because if we lost there we certainly couldn’t have won this game here, not with the crowd like that and the way that they played," Beveridge said.
"I knew that they were going to come at us and defensively we were very good in the first, but we did a woeful job on the boards. Absolutely woeful job. Our bigs had their butts handed to them by Tragardh and Davidson. If we don’t block out and rebound, we won't beat them on Friday night.
"We did a terrible job defending the on-ball screen and to be honest one of the turning points was the B.S bank shot by Luke Martin again. It happened in Perth and happened again, and that created a lot of energy with the crowd and got them going again. This is a tough place to play in."
The Wildcats have taken pride in their tough and relentless defence all season long, but that went missing at times in Tuesday's game and Beveridge was forced to question if all his players gave 100 per cent effort throughout the whole game.
"We talk about being relentless and I don’t think that we were relentless enough on every single play," he said.
"We need all 10 players, just like Wollongong do, to give nothing but 100 per cent and I'm going to question how hard we all consistently played."
Defending on-ball screens and committing costly fouls also proved costly for the Wildcats the longer Tuesday's game went on.
"We knew that this was going to be extremely difficult to win, but we were going to give it our best crack. It was probably in that final quarter where we did a poor job of defending the on-ball and we fouled way too much," he said.
"We fouled 21 times to their 12 and we can't give away cheap fouls, which gives them cheap points and the ability to run offence. We have to be a lot smarter with the fouls we give."
The Wildcats shooting was also way off. They shot just 37 per cent from the field and a dreadful 4-of-24 from three-point range. Beveridge doesn’t believe they took bad shots, though, rather they just weren’t falling on the night.
The Hawks' point guards also employed the same tactic they used with Corey 'Homicide' Williams on Damian Martin and Brad Robbins daring them to shoot, and Beveridge will work on getting them to handle that better back in Perth on Friday night.
"We gave it a crack and we knew we had to play better than the other night if we were going to win. I don’t think we did and particularly we didn’t shoot the ball very well at all. That's one of our worst shooting percentages of the year. Obviously you don’t want that to happen in a Grand Final, but whether we were tight or what I don’t know," Beveridge said.
"A lot of the shots we took weren’t too bad, but we second guessed ourselves. The trend started with Damo coming off the on-ball screen and they just dare him to shoot. Gordie does a great job getting in the opposition player's head about letting certain players shoot the ball. We need to make an adjustment and have a bit more belief in knocking down the open shot."
