WORCESTER Wolves need to treat every game as though it is against one of the top teams in the British Basketball League.
At the moment, I think we are competing at the level of whoever our opponents are and that’s disappointing because we have shown we can play at a higher standard when needed.
We have good games against Newcastle Eagles and London Lions but, with no disrespect to the other teams, we are playing to the level of those sides who are a bit more scrappy and disorganised.
It’s trying to get to that point when we’re playing at the high level regardless of who we’re up against.
With the talent we have, it can only come down to the mental approach of players.
Regardless of who we’re playing, we scout them the same way so nothing changes from the coaches’ point of view as far as how we prepare.
It really comes down to the players’ state of mind with them perhaps looking at the league table and thinking games will be easy.
But we’ve seen already this year that there are no easy games.
We can make them easy but, because we have been playing at the level of the opposition, it’s made it quite tough for us.
I am looking for a consistently high level in every game and if we do that, instead of getting by in some of these matches, we will win them comfortably.
That’s the mental approach we now have to start taking as a team.
We beat Bristol Flyers 79-65 last Friday and it was a good victory but there’s still plenty more to work on.
It was one of those games when I thought, if we had been a bit more focused, we could have made it a lot easier for ourselves.
We threatened to run away with the match and then we allowed them back into the game – that’s been a trait of ours this season.
Against Glasgow Rocks on Sunday, when Robert Thurman scored 26 points, we ended up wondering how we lost the game.
It was a match that was there for the taking and we didn’t make the most of our opportunity.
All the time you don’t put teams away, you are giving them an opportunity to get back into the game.
We shouldn’t have been in a situation where we had a shot to win it, the game should already have been won.
It didn’t go in so we went into overtime and even then we were scoring at will but weren’t stopping them at the other end.
We had a chance to go one point up with 3.9 seconds to go, which would have put them under more pressure to make the shot.
The fact we only made one out of the two free throws gave them a chance for a Hail Mary and it went in for three.
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