FINDING a way to win matches when not firing on all cylinders is something Worcester Wolves have learned to do over the past couple of seasons.

One of the main reasons for that is the work put in by both the players and the strength and conditioning coaches from the University of Worcester.

Led by Marc Scriven, and third-year student Darius Innis, the players have three sessions a week working on their strength and conditioning, which is something the fans don’t see.

They don’t see how hard the players are working between matches and I can assure them they are working exceptionally hard because we want to be putting on a good performance when it comes to game day.

We want to know that the players are in peak condition for the next game and that defensively everything is set up while, offensively, people are in their rhythm and shooting the ball with confidence.

If we can do that, everything comes together in that one game.

If it doesn’t, which happens sometimes, that’s fine but we’ve still got to find a way to win the game, which we have been doing.

I feel that we are going to be as fit as any team in the league and the longer games go I think the more focused we can stay because of that fitness and the work we do.

Friday’s match against Surrey United at the University Arena, which we won 82-68, was a case in point.

Surrey are not the side they were last year, when they were a poor team and we beat them three times.

This season they have brought in three pretty good Americans who can score. It was always going to make them much better and it was a battle.

However, you want to go into games where you have to challenge yourself and the players have to focus on the game.

The bottom line is we executed our plays when we needed to in the end and we kept them to under 70 points which is a great defensive effort.

Although our offence wasn’t clicking, and we had some guys out there who didn’t give me the kind of production that I would like, we won the game.

Nothing has been lost, we can move on and look to put our offensive plays right, but I’m very pleased with our defensive structure.

My concern is just for us to try to win games and make sure everybody’s playing well at the same time to help us win the match.

I was delighted on Friday because Disraeli Lufadeju played a lot of minutes, as did Kalil Irving, and Sean Park, one of our summer signings, came off the bench and did a good job.

They all contributed to the bigger picture which was the team effort and winning the game.