TWO weeks is a long time in basketball and I can’t wait for Worcester Wolves to return to action against Surrey United tomorrow night (7.30pm).
We haven’t played since losing to Manchester Giants on Sunday, October 5, and the players are itching for a game, they’re getting a bit irritable with each other and are probably sick of my voice.
We have trained harder than we would have done normally leading up to a game and the break has given us time to put some things right and hopefully that will be seen against Surrey at the University Arena.
They’ve had a pretty good start to the season, with a victory over Glasgow Rocks, so they’re a team we can’t take lightly at all.
Trevor Setty, who played for Plymouth last year in the game at the arena when the Raiders beat us, has joined them and Kramer Knutson came from London Lions so they’ve got some experienced BBL players.
Surrey are much stronger and competitive opposition than they were last year and we are going to have to get our game together to win.
We beat them comfortably last season but I don’t think that’s going to be the case this time around. They’ve been competitive in every game they’ve played this season and they will play hard for 40 minutes.
They might not have the depth we have but sometimes that can work in a team’s favour because the players know they are going to play all the minutes and can relax without the worry of being brought off the court.
From our point of view, the individual players have to do what they do best and what they’ve been brought here for.
If they do that, it fits like a jigsaw and we should have a positive outcome.
Since losing to Manchester, we have watched the game again and tried to refocus on our defence — one or two players have been behind the eight-ball on that so we’ve got them up to speed.
There have also been a few more fitness sessions but we’ve tried to vary things to keep players on their toes.
We have had some sessions in the evening and afternoon and 7am starts as well just to keep their minds active.
It seems like that was the Giants’ Christmas and birthday at once because they haven’t won a game since. They had their day but it was one of those games where had we had a bit more character and steel about us we should have won.
Despite 19 points from Remi Dibo and 18 each for Chavis Holmes and Robert Thurman, we didn’t take our opportunity and hopefully we’ve learned form that experience.
It’s not a great feeling having to wait two weeks to put it right and we want to make sure we don’t fall into that trap again.
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