United players find joy in the game and head to finals in top form
A BIT of fun and a focus on defence has left Geelong United on the edge of making the Country Basketball League men’s grand final.
With a long season of Youth League or NBL1 ahead for most of the United roster, coach Brenton O’Brien chose to use the summer season as a tune-up for his squad.
But the slightly more relaxed approach hasn’t hurt the results on court, though, as Geelong only dropped one game in finishing top in the South West division.
Geelong meets Horsham Hornets in a semi-final at AWA Alliance Stadium on Saturday at 7pm.
“We’ve been focused on letting the boys have some fun and that’s been good for all of them, to find that joy in the game,” O’Brien said.
“Sometimes it gets a bit serious and you can lose that passion for it. They’ve done a good job of building towards the next season and their careers — and that’s a priority for us.
“I think we’ve put everyone in a good stead to play the way we want to play as a club defensively.
“We put a lot of ball pressure on and focus on how we can take passing lanes away.
“It’s actually has probably been the biggest struggle for us this year on the defensive end – we let teams score too much.
“That’s just a part of the process of learning and I’ve seen massive improvement.”
O’Brien nominated Wang
Nyieth and Seth Garcia as big improvers, while Cohen Blythe has improved his offensive game and been averaging 15.67 points for Geelong.
Max Kos has led the way in scoring, averaging 20.1 points a game.
“I’ve been really impressed with how (Garcia has) gone, from not playing many minutes at the start of the season and now he’s a crucial part of our core group,” O’Brien said.
United has met the Hornets once this season, a comprehensive nine-point win in December.
Garcia poured in 25 points on that day but was matched by Horsham’s Tim Pickert, who scored 31.
“If everyone does their job and knows their role and competes, we should be in a good position to be successful. But they have two or three guys who, on their day, can really light it up,” O'Brien said. “It will be a great game to watch.”