Breakers stay in fight for playoffs spot
Last week he saw ‘‘quit’’ in his players’ eyes. This penultimate round of the Australian NBL Breakers coach Paul Henare spotted something much more palatable fight.
As a result of that, and a nailbiting come-from-behind 88-87 victory over competition leaders the Adelaide 36ers in their sweatbox home arena on Saturday night, the Breakers still have a heartbeat heading into the final round of the regular season.
They will host the dangerous Melbourne United in Auckland on Friday night needing to win to finish on 14-14. If they can do that they will then sit back and see how the cards fall, and whether that .500 mark will be enough to squeak into the playoffs.
A win over Melbourne would see the Breakers own the series splits over them and Perth. On the other side of the coin, Illawarra, Cairns and Sydney all hold the tiebreaks over the Kiwi club. If two teams finish level the series split will be the decider.
Henare said it was important his men focus strictly on what they can control, which is taking care of business against Melbourne, and from there it was ’’que sera, sera’’ territory.
‘‘It’s control what we can control,’’ he said after his team overcame a 13-point deficit early in the final quarter with a clutch finish.
‘‘We’ve done a pretty good job over the last month, but possibly when we had a good little win streak we got ahead of ourselves and started to look too far forward.
‘‘All we can do is play the best game of basketball we can and at the end of the round we’ll see where we are.’’
After blasting his lacklustre team last Sunday in Sydney for an insipid effort in an 84-57 defeat to the Kings, Henare admitted the emotions were much more positive in Adelaide where his men shook off a 27-12 Adelaide thirdquarter charge to eke out an unlikely victory.
‘‘I’m extremely proud of the guys for responding the way they did, but also we got ourselves in a bit of a hole, Adelaide got momentum, and there have been times this year when that’s happened we haven’t come out of that hole.
‘‘For us to really dig deep, find a way and grind away, I couldn’t be happier for the boys.’’
Kirk Penney (21 points) and Kevin Dillard (20 points) made big shots in that final quarter when the Breakers looked in trouble as Mika Vukona fouled out at the 9:14 mark, and was subsequently ejected for expressing his displeasure.
But the Breakers couldn’t have fought back from a 61-74 deficit then without huge contributions from big men Rob Loe (15 points, four rebounds, five assists) and Alex Pledger (nine points and a game-high 14 rebounds) who played a combined 53 minutes.
And though Tom Abercrombie couldn’t get his shot to drop (just two of nine for the game) his eight boards and two blocks were crucial, as were the two big triples hit by youngster Finn Delany in a productive 12 minutes off the pine.
Henare was also pleased with a more acceptable turnover count (15) and his team’s ability, for the most part, to keep Adelaide away from their high-tempo default mode. They had just 67 shots and were six of 22 from deep.