SEEING the season end with defeat to Surrey Heat in the British League play-off quarter-finals was definitely an opportunity missed for Worcester Wolves.
There have been some high points during the campaign but going out to Surrey in the manner that we did was a real low and I think it’s going to take, not only myself but a few of the players, a big part of the summer to get over.
Although we took a slender three-point lead to their place for the second leg, the fact was we were up 14 points on the tie at one point and 10 ahead on several occasions.
We were up 10 points going into the fourth quarter and literally handed them the tie.
There were too many sloppy turn-overs in the final quarter and they shut down Sherrad Prezzie-Blue and Alex Owumi really well in the remaining minutes.
We couldn’t find the basket and the whole manner in which we collapsed was really disappointing and I feel it was a massive opportunity missed.
In the first leg, I think we were almost too hyper about the game. We’d had a fantastic week in practise and the guys were really up for the game and we almost came out too excited and forgot to play.
We didn’t perform well in the first leg but I felt if we could go and shoot a bit better in the second we’d be OK.
For big chunks of that game we were ahead and led for around 35 minutes so to fall at the final hurdle is tough to take.
I think it’s fair comment to say that we haven’t fulfilled our potential this season.
Had we made it through to the play-off semi-finals it would have been around par for what we needed to do.
With the team we built and the quality we had, you would have liked to think we would have done a lot better and I am really disappointed that we didn’t.
We recruited well last summer and had competition in every position which was fantastic.
Obviously we didn’t get off to the start we wanted with Prezzie not being available.
When he arrived he played a few games but then got hurt and we just felt we were playing catch-up all the time.
That said, when I came to the club I wanted to be making the play-offs year in, year out and for the second season running we’ve done that and had a chance of potentially finishing third again.
Overall, although I think we underachieved slightly, we still made the play-offs comfortably and gave ourselves a chance in the semi-final of the Trophy against Leicester Riders.
We lost that tie by six points on aggregate and the quarter-finals of the play-offs by three.
We are certainly getting closer and, who knows, it may be third time lucky next year.
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