Perth Wildcats captain Jesse Wagstaff admits his group was fortunate to solely lose by 21 factors throughout Sunday’s belting from South East Melbourne, saying the 112-91 scoreline wasn’t a real reflection of the house group’s domination.
The Phoenix gained the rebounding 49-25 and South East Melbourne’s tally included 19 offensive boards.
Wagstaff stated his group was by no means actually within the contest.
“I said to the group at half-time, it was a six-point game and I think we were exceptionally lucky for it to be a six-point game,” Wagstaff stated.
“Even the final score, I don’t think was a true reflection of the game. We should have been getting pumped at half-time. They had 49 rebounds and we had 25. That’s pretty much double.
“That’s probably a good indication of where we were at. Credit to them. They fully deserved it. They wanted it more. To only lose by 21, we were lucky.”
Phoenix coach Simon Mitchell revealed he focused the Wildcats’ rebounding weak point, and import Alan Williams was unstoppable with 27 factors, 14 rebounds and 6 assists. Perth have struggled with rebounding for many of the season and Mitchell stated it was an apparent tactic for his group to give attention to.
“They’ve improved a little bit in that area but we still felt we could dominate, and we did,” Mitchell stated.
“It’s an area of the game we’re pretty accomplished at. We’re the number one rebounding team in the league and the number one offensive rebounding team in the league. It’s a team we thought, with their smaller back court, that we may be able to put some hurt on them there, and the boys did.”
The Wildcats dodged a bullet late within the match when mid-season recruit Tai Webster hobbled from the court docket clutching his proper hamstring. But coach John Rillie stated the point-guard was tremendous and had solely left the sport attributable to fouling out.
Perth entered the sport using a wave of momentum after Friday night time’s emotional win over Sydney Kings. But their flight to Victoria on Saturday was cancelled, leading to them not touchdown till virtually midnight.
Mitchell defined he intentionally prevented calling time-outs to pressure the Wildcats to play beneath fatigue given they’ve constantly used a small group of gamers in current matches.
Bryce Cotton once more high scored for Perth with 25 factors, Corey Webster completed with 21 and Luke Travers managed 13, however Perth lacked the wide range of contributors which have helped them to climb the ladder.
