Breakers won’t let misfire detour them

THE shots weren’t dropping in Cairns and neither will the Breakers’ heads as the Kiwi club contemplates a quick postChristmas turnaround.

The Breakers had a shocker as they were thumped 83-59 at the Cairns Taipans on Sunday, a tough travel schedule seeming to get the better of them as they went zero-for-17 from behind the arc and also gave up 15 offensive rebounds in a 44-31 shellacking on the boards.

It was the Aussie NBL-leading Breakers’ fifth defeat of the season – a mark shared by both the Taipans and Perth Wildcats – and serves not only as a timely reminder that the margin for error is minimal in this league but that it’s going to be a tight in the race for the minor premiership over the run home.

It was never going to be a positive outcome for the Breakers when they were so poor in their two key areas – shooting the threeball and rebounding – but afterwards assistant coach Paul Henare vowed that shortcomings would be addressed ahead of the tough Boxing Day visit to the Sydney Kings.

For the first time in their history, the Breakers are faced with travelling on Christmas Day and Henare made it clear in his trademark manner that the players would be challenged to dial in mentally amid the distractions of the holiday period.

‘‘We’re not going to go pointing fingers at anyone in our organisation – it’s just one game of a 28-game season and these things happen,’’ he said. ‘‘You don’t want them to happen, you don’t expect them to happen but sometimes shit does happen and you have to be able to move on from it.

‘‘We don’t have excuses at this club. The schedule is what it is and we have to be good enough and strong enough mentally to be able to deal with these challenges. This was pretty poor and I know the guys will be hurting from it.

‘‘We’ll have two days’ training before we hit the road again and we need to stay locked in, stay in work mode and stay with a bit of an edge about us, even though that’s tough during this time of the year.

‘‘One of the positives I know will come from this game is we bounce back pretty well. We’ve got a good challenge on Boxing Day in Sydney that the guys will be amped and ready for I’m sure.’’

There was a lot wrong with the Breakers as they dropped their second straight game to the Taipans in Cairns but the sight of the starting backcourt of Cedric Jackson and Corey Webster going a combined four of 29 from the floor was particularly alarming.

‘‘As coaches we can’t accept that,’’ he said. ‘‘If the ball is not going through the hole, we’ve got to find other ways to get it done. The sad thing was Mika Vukona was the only one who turned up to play. As captain he put us on his shoulders but it was too much.

‘‘If you look at the numbers the 17 three-point attempts has to be close to a season low, so we had a good mix of inside and out.

‘‘We were clearly more efficient when we attacked the basket and we’ve got to adjust on the fly and find ways to keep that scoreboard ticking over.’’

The Breakers have been good this season at rebounding from their bad performances.