Henare rues reaction as offence breaks down
COACH Paul Henare wants his club to be proactive, instead of reactive, for the remainder of the NBL season.
The third-year Breakers coach was left frustrated he followed the Cairns Taipans’ lead to go small in the final term on Saturday, which played a key role in the hosts’ comeback.
Both clubs went with small er line-ups down the stretch as Snakes big men Nnanna Egwu and Nate Jawai sat down with Alex Loughton and Jerry Evans Jr as the makeshift front court in the final five minutes.
Henare did not give any of the three imposing centres at his disposal more than 18 minutes on the court in the defeat.
“Things were going well and then Fearney (Cairns coach Aaron Fearne) changed the line-up and went smaller,” Henare said. “We struggled to adapt.
“For me, as a coach, we need to do a better job of making sure I am putting guys in the right places.
“We reacted and we went smaller and that is when our offence dried up.
“We have three centres (Rob Loe, Alex Pledger and Rakeem Christmas) there that ended up sitting on the bench at the end of the game.
“Maybe it is about us setting the tone and having teams react to us and not the other way around.”
The Snakes bench belted the Kiwis as they outscored them 35-16, with New Zealand struggling to find any offensive output from anyone outside of DJ Newbill and Shea Ili.
Breakers guard Newbill came alive in the third quarter, scoring seven points to put the visitors in the lead heading into the final period before they pushed the advantage out to eight early in the final term.
New Zealand will be hoping star import Edgar Sosa can return soon as he made the trip to Cairns after suffering an ankle injury on Thursday night but did not suit up.
“We didn’t have full confidence in him in the warm-up so we pulled the pin and we’ll try and get him right for next week,” Henare said.