R19 Preview: Perth Wildcats vs NZ Breakers

When: 9.30pm (AEDT), Thursday April 7, 2022

Where: RAC Arena, Perth

Broadcast: ESPN; Kayo; Sky Sport NZ

 

Who won last time?

Perth 95 (Law 26, Cotton 25, Blanchfield 14) d New Zealand 85 (Wetzell 15, Delany 14, Siva 13) - Round 16, RAC Arena

The 'Cats were back in The Jungle for the first time since December 19 and arrived on a five-game winning streak and in second position on the NBL table, but the Breakers weren’t interested in handing them anything.

The two teams played out a classic overtime battle in Hobart days earlier with Bryce Cotton the hero at the death, but the Breakers built on that to race to a 20-10 lead after five minutes and were up 34-28 by quarter-time.

Perth worked their way on top eventually despite still being down six at half-time. The 'Cats turned that into a five-point lead heading into the fourth and then continued to pull away for the 10-point win even though there was some nervous moments late minus Mitch Norton.

Vic Law put up another huge game for the Wildcats with 26 points, 12 rebounds and three assists with partner-in-crime Bryce Cotton delivering 25 points and six assists. Todd Blanchfield added 14 points, Luke Travers nine points and six boards, and Majok Majok eight points, 12 rebounds and four assists.

There was a lot to like from the Breakers with Yanni Wetzell producing 15 points and six rebounds, Finn Delany 14 points, Peyton Siva 13 points and nine assists, Tom Abercrombie 12 points, and Will McDowell-White 11 points and five assists.

 

What happened last start?

The motivation might be different given where both teams are situated this season with the Perth Wildcats fighting for their playoff lives and the New Zealand Breakers trying to find the drive, but both teams are searching for a bounce back win on Thursday night.

The Wildcats have now lost three straight matches at RAC Arena for the first ever time following defeats at the hands of the Tasmania JackJumpers, Sydney Kings and Melbourne United. To top it off, it's the first time since 1999 they've lost three in-a-row in Perth overall as well.

Perth returned home after 14 straight road matches to finish with nine games at RAC Arena, but that hasn’t quite gone to plan with the three consecutive defeats heading into Thursday night's clash with the Breakers.

Not having Mitch Norton and Michael Frazier again on Monday night against Melbourne United didn’t help, and Vic Law being a little hobbled either, but they did battle hard and would have felt it was a better performance than they delivered against Sydney and Tasmania the previous week.

While they have been tough to stop offensively for a lot of this season, it was their shooting that was off against United as they went 27/70 at 38 per cent as a team and 7/30 at 23 per cent from beyond the arc.

The good news is with losses from the South East Melbourne Phoenix and JackJumpers, that they do retain a gap in fourth spot on the chasing pack with five matches despite losing three straight.

The misery that has become this season continued for the Breakers in Hobart on Monday night as well with a loss to the Cairns Taipans, but again they didn’t play that badly in the 10-point defeat.

Without question, there were again impressive things about the performance including the stunning 13-point opening quarter from Ousmane Dieng and then the all-round game of Yanni Wetzell that saw him finish with 24 points and nine rebounds.

It wasn’t quite enough to get the win and the Breakers have now lost five in-a-row to slip to a 5-18 record. While finding motivation could be a challenge, they are still showing flashes what they can do and are not short on talent that could still go into Perth and hand the Wildcats a fourth consecutive loss.

 

Who’s in form?

Matt Hodgson – For the Wildcats to go anywhere this season they need their bigs to stand up and provide frontcourt support to Vic Law, and Hodgy is building some form now that he's getting a good run at it finally this season. Six points and 11 rebounds might not jump out at you, but that was a significant impact he made against Melbourne United on Monday night and he provided exactly what the 'Cats need to him. When you have the weapons of Law, Bryce Cotton and Todd Blanchfield, you need your big man to be a physical presence, set screens, crash the glass and then just finish at the rim when the chance is there. Hodgy did that impressively on Monday and just needs to keep it going now that he's been able to string four straight matches together following a calf injury.

Yanni Wetzell – The big Pretzel couldn’t have done much more to try and will his team over the line against the Cairns Taipans again on Hobart on Monday night. He continues to put himself in the discussion as one of the best bigs in the league in his first season at the Breakers and second in the NBL. He put up another 24 points and nine rebounds against Cairns on Monday night, he is averaging 17.4 points and 7.9 rebounds a game, and everything needs to go through him for the Breakers to be a chance of getting some wins between now and the end of the season.

 

Who needs to be?

Todd Blanchfield – With defences focusing in on Bryce Cotton and Vic Law, and with Law under an injury cloud this week, Blanch needs to step up to be that other scoring threat for the Wildcats to thrive especially in the continued absence of point guard Mitch Norton. He did have 15 points and seven rebounds on Monday night against Melbourne and that's pretty much what the Wildcats need him to continue producing to ensure he's a threat on the floor and that the opposition defence has to put a lot of time into trying to contain, which helps his teammates in turn either by him producing or allowing them to.

Finn Delany – He was an All-Second Team member last season for the Breakers and was knocking on the door of the All-First Team, but his #NBL22 hasn’t quite reached those standards. Now that's understandable given all the challenges everyone on the Breakers are facing, but he does need to step up if his team are going to finish off the season with some wins. Delany is coming off his only scoreless game of the season on Monday against the Taipans, but he's putting up 10.1 points and 5.7 rebounds a game. While that's down on his production from last season, he's still capable of being a match-winner for the Breakers and what better time to show that than Thursday night in Perth.

 

Who’s statting up?

 - Perth is currently on its first ever three-game losing streak at RAC Arena first in Perth since 1999. A loss on Thursday and it will be their first time losing four straight at home since 1998. It's only happened once in the 38 years for the 'Cats
 
 - The Wildcats' offence has dried up the past three games averaging just 79.3 points. Before that they scored 90 points or more five straight times for the first time in the 40-minute era

 - The Breakers need import guard Chasson Randle to find some form. He hasn’t scored a field goal in four of his last five games, and in those matches has scored a total of 13 points and collated 17 fouls. He's gone scoreless in two games against the Wildcats to date

 

Who’s matching up?

Luke Travers v Ousmane Dieng – They might not directly match up with another too much, but both players have a lot of similar physical traits, their games have similarities and both have enormous upside which they hope will see them in the NBA this time next year. Both of them are in some impressive form as well and have been on similar trajectories. Travers is looking more and more accomplished all the time turning himself from a player who showed flashes of excitement with his athleticism, to now a well-rounded player. He can deliver flashy plays with dunks and big blocks, but his ball handling is improving, his shot is getting better and he's getting close to being a complete package all the time. Then there's Dieng and he's almost unrecognisable from the player that arrived at the Breakers. All of a sudden he's confident to bring the ball up the floor and create for himself or his teammates, he's getting in the passing lanes, he's pulling up for jumpers and knocking them down, and he is looking every part the first round NBA draft pick.

 

Who’s talking the talk?

Wildcats coach Scott Morrison was happier with his team's performance on Monday against Melbourne following the losses to Sydney and Tasmania, but obviously there's no satisfaction still with a third straight loss on their home floor.

However, he is hopeful that the focus now can be on executing better and the team's effort levels won't need to come into question moving forward.

"Well I think we can be better. I thought our effort was improved but it's getting kind of late in the season to be talking about effort. Hopefully that's fixed now. We just kind of spoke about how we make a big deal about the culture here, and the history here. It's kind of time to now start living up to it for everyone so to speak," Morrison said.

"As a coach you can motivate in the short-term, but that's going to wear pretty thin in the long-term and that's not dependable. You depend on the team to motivate themselves and we have good guys here, maybe they just needed a bit of a wakeup call. 

"We're also shorthanded, we're playing good teams with two really good players out. You can understand why we haven’t been our best, but we have to attempt to be our best and you'll see a better effort, and a more focused effort in this game. If anyone made the mistake of assuming it would be easy, that should be rectified after three straight losses."

Todd Blanchfield also felt it was an improved performance from Perth against Melbourne on Monday, but they do need to keep improving to get back to winning and to start getting some of that momentum back that they did have only a couple of weeks ago.

"This is an extremely hard to place to win but it's not a freebie for us. We can't just step on the court and assume we're going to get a win. We gave it all in this game and left it all out there, but there's a few things we need to tidy up. The good thing is we have a short turnaround to play again on Thursday to redeem ourselves," Blanchfield said.

"There's been a whole bunch of things the last two games, but we came out in this game and gave it our all, and we battled. We held them to around our target but just got a little stagnant in the fourth quarter and I think that hurt us down the stretch. 

"When we stand and wait for Bryce to make something happen when he has two, sometimes three, guys draped on him it's always going to make it hard. It's up to the rest of us step up and stay aggressive to make things happen down the stretch."

Breakers coach Dan Shamir took Monday night's loss for his team in Hobart against the Cairns Taipans to heart. You can see the toll this season is taking on everyone with New Zealand game after game, and that did appear to come to the fore on Monday night with that fifth consecutive defeat.

However, Shamir is now going to do some thinking on different ways to get his team up and about for this run of five games to close the season starting on Thursday night in Perth.

"I definitely need to think about it and maybe come up with something creative. Usually what I try to do is just stay the course and prepare for the game, and maintain the standards by doing the thing you always do," Shamir said.

"You try to fix something with somebody, have a little chat and you think personally and defensive adjustments, and maybe something that can give us an edge. I definitely need to think and we all do about that now. It's tough to find rhythm and these are all titles for a team that is really engaged, playing together and communicating well. 

"Usually these things happen under different circumstances to what we have right now. At the same time, we have a lot of good characters and people, and I'm sure they care. It's not easy to play good basketball and there's no one formula for solving problems, but this game was bad for me. 

"Leaving the game thinking this is what it's going to be for the last five games with everybody's heads already somewhere else and with no real something to push us from the outside. I'm going to give it the best shot I've got and we all will have to find a way to play without any real goals," Shamir added.

"We're not playing for finals or a title, but you are playing for your self-respect and who you are as a player, as a team and as a coach. I'm really hoping that we'll find a way to win games and play better."

While New Zealand lost recently to Perth in Hobart and at RAC Arena, one of those went to overtime where Bryce Cotton broke their hearts and they battled hard in The Jungle in the other.

Shamir is hoping they can play well again and this time come out on the winning side.

"It's going to be a tough, tough stretch, or an intense one, when we are playing five games from this until the middle of next ones in five different cities with a lot of travel," Shamir said.

"It's all good if you are going to use the opportunity to do something. We played Perth recently twice and one of the games was amazing, the second game was also good. We came out short but we had a pretty good 30 minutes in Perth but it's nothing to do with it. 

"We're probably mentally in a bit of a different place now and I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels like that. We have a lot of good players and leaders that can do something better than that for the next game."

The growth physically and in his game of Ousmane Dieng has been one of the great highlights of the New Zealand Breakers this season. He just wants to keep improving and trying to help his team get some wins.

"I'm just trying to do my best for the team and to try to help my team the best I can," Dieng said.

"Obviously I'm far from perfect so I have a lot of things to work on. I will take that feedback and work on that. When I started this season that wasn’t good, but I worked every day in practice and in games to improve every day. I'm really more confident now after doing that.

"I think it's just in our heads now for these last five games. We have nothing to lose now so we just have to enjoy playing and it will be good I think."