Devilish Saints please coach Braswell happy at feisty buildup to finals weekend
Arguments and feistiness were exactly what Kevin Braswell wanted to see from his Wellington Saints squad ahead of his coaching swansong.
The 39-year-old ends his threeseason tenure as Saints coach after the National Basketball League Final Four in Wellington this weekend to take up the job as New Zealand Breakers head coach.
His first two seasons in charge ended in titles, including a stunning 20-0 season in 2017, and Braswell said training this week had given him a similar feeling to the leadup to the previous two finals series.
‘‘I feel like yesterday’s [Thursday] training, and I hope I don’t jinx us right now, but yesterday’s training with the arguing and the feistiness and the fighting, all that stuff was something for the last two years we’ve had almost every leadup for a finals series,’’ he said ahead of today’s semifinal against the Hawke’s Bay Hawks.
‘‘I’ve been waiting for that with this team. For the last three or four weeks we’ve been getting there in patches, but yesterday’s training was like ‘wow, OK, they’re ready’.’’
Adding to that confidence was the way the Saints dispatched the Nelson Giants 91-75 in their final regular season match on July 27 to clinch the regular season title.
‘‘What I saw from them last Thursday against Nelson, I was like ‘wow’, because we weren’t playing the best basketball in the first half and then all of a sudden in the second half we put on a defensive clinic.
‘‘Nelson can score and we held them to 14 and 15 points in the third and fourth quarter. That spoke a lot about the steps we’ve made.’’
The win took their season record to 15-3 and Braswell’s overall record as Saints coach to 50-8.
It also meant they avoided the Giants and Southland Sharks in the semifinals, who meet in the other semifinal at TSB Bank Arena tonight.
The Giants beat the Sharks 103-87 in the final match of the regular season last Sunday – a scoreline which surprised Braswell.
‘‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw the score in that final game, because I know both coaches would have been trying to win that final game because you want to go into the finals playing at your best.
‘‘I think the prep for Nelson of playing us twice helped Nelson on that Sunday because they were playoff-type atmosphere games, but I think it will help the Sharks as well because now they’ll know and understand the atmosphere and intensity is going to rise a little bit more.
‘‘[Southland coach] Judd [Flavell] has done a hell of a job with them and they have been one of the most consistent teams all year. I’m looking forward to watching that game.’’
As for the Hawks, who the Saints swept in their three games this year, Braswell expected his former assistant coach turned Hawks coach Zico Coronel to have a few tricks up his sleeve.
‘‘Every game we played the was a tough game. We’ve always pulled it out in the last five or six minutes against them.
‘‘Zico has done a hell of a job with