Supercats in form ahead of Frankston clash
GEELONG Supercats coach Leon O’Neill says his side must consolidate last weekend’s double in tonight’s away clash with Frankston.
Sitting at 6-4 at the midway point of the year, O’Neill’s men have weathered a tough draw to start the season, hav- ing given themselves a chance at a 21st-straight finals series.
With road trips to Albury, Ballarat, Canberra and the annual Tassie double behind them, the Supercats men look towards a back half of the season that only requires a road trip to Mt Gambier and Bendigo, with six of the remaining 10 games to be played on their home court at the Geelong Arena.
Having found some form last weekend against Dandenong and Albury, the Supercats should go into tonight’s clash with the Frankston Blues full of confidence.
The seventh-placed Supercats take on a team that’s won just one of 12 games for the season, that coming against the bottom-placed Canberra Gunners, but the coach will always be wary of complacency.
“Our boys will be ready to go Saturday night,” O’Neill said. “We need to go to Frankston and make sure we don’t undo all the good work of last weekend.”
With John Davis finding his feet in the season and being named in the SEABL Team of the Week for a second time, the Supercats are in unfamiliar territory where Nathan Herbert is not the team’s leading scorer. “It’s a nice position to be in,” O’Neill said.
“Herbie is such a good shooter, but if we don’t have to rely on him to score all the points, then that makes us better.”
Davis (218 points), Herbert (175) and Gatlin (169) have done the bulk of the scoring for the Supercats over the first half of the season, but it’s the inclusion of point guards Mi- chael Luxford and Matthew Johns that have the team playing an exciting brand of basketball.
The coach says with the new additions of Luxford, Johns and Davis, the team has taken a little while to find its feet. But he adds, if the players can maintain the defensive pressure of last weekend for the rest of the season, they will be a tough team to beat.