Three Losses Provide Hard Lessons

Illawarra Mercury

Saturday September 29, 2007

By TIM KEEBLE

WOLLONGONG captain Mat Campbell believes his side has learned some hard lessons in three straight losses.

Last night the Hawks copped a 25-point hiding from NBL champions Brisbane after being down by 10 at half-time.

The lopsided clash highlighted the vast gap between a title contender like Brisbane and a top four long shot like the Hawks. The road ahead doesn't get any smoother, with heavyweights Cairns the next assignment for the Hawks.

"We've played two of the best teams in the league and we know what the benchmark is. We've seen it now," Campbell said.

"We were in the game against Melbourne on their home court and we came home and Brisbane gave us a clinic. They're the benchmarks and we can learn from that.

"The lapses are what's hurting us at the moment. We're struggling to find a style that suits our group."

The Hawks were down by 10 at quarter-time and half-time but the Bullets were always in control.

"At times I was happy with the effort, but we gave them too many open looks from the three-point line. They scored way too many points," Wollongong coach Eric Cooks said.

"An area we stressed was that we didn't want them to stand up and shoot the ball, especially Ebi (Ere) and CJ (Bruton) and both those guys got a lot of open looks.

"We shot the ball pretty well inside, but we struggled outside the arc.

"We have a very good three-point shooting team so we're not going to go away from that, but the ball didn't drop tonight. We had a few too many turnovers and they did a good job of congesting the paint. We were forced to shoot threes but we did a pretty poor job in that area."

In Adelaide, Melbourne registered a 101-85 triumph over the 36ers.

BRISBANE 113 (CJ Bruton 25 E Ere 22 D Rychart 19) bt WOLLONGONG 88 (M Campbell 19 K Franklin 16 J Peters 16) at WIN Entertainment Centre. Crowd 2829.

© 2007 Illawarra Mercury

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