Rillie: Perth's Real Test Comes Now

How quickly things can turn.  

Barely a fortnight ago, there were calls for change at the Perth Wildcats.

Five straight losses had John Rillie searching for answers, and perhaps unfairly, import Brady Manek was the target of much of the external angst. 

Then, the Wildcats seemed to flick a switch. And Manek lit up. 

25 points, 6/8 from three and just 22 minutes of court time. It was quite the response against one of the championship favourite, the Adelaide 36ers. 

“It’s amazing what making shots can do for you,” Rillie said of Manek’s form reversal.

“For his career, that’s what he’s known for. That’s what people’s expectation is. That’s what his own expectation is. So when you do get back to a level that you feel happy about, you do relax and there is a back to normal life.”

Of course, it’s only one win and for Manek, only one big performance, but is this the moment for Perth and its loyal fans? Can they claim another scalp against the Phoenix on Thursday night? 

They’ll be fresh off a break, but so will Simon Mitchell’s men. 

“You feel confident, you feel like you address it in many ways – practicing and watching film. But we really find out where we are at tomorrow (Friday) night,” Rillie said.

“If we do those things and we take the blips out of it, you guys will think we’ve done a great job in our 11 days off.

“We played four games in nine days. I thought that would be great for us to play a lot of games together and we go 1-3. So now it’s a bad idea. But tomorrow at 6.30, if we win, the break came at a great time.

“We get judged 28 nights per year. It doesn’t matter what we did today or what we did yesterday. If we don’t show up tomorrow night, it was a failure.”

Perth takes on the South East Melbourne Phoenix at 9.30pm AEDT on Thursday, live on ESPN via Kayo and Foxtel.