Basketball: Breakers concentrating on what went wrong

Ekene Ibekwe attempts a lay up during the match against Townsville. Photo / Getty

The Breakers are turning inward in a bid to halt the hottest team in the Australian NBL.

While the Adelaide 36ers' run of seven straight wins has turned heads around the league, the Breakers are instead looking inside their own ahead of tonight's clash at Vector Arena.

Playoff implications will imbue the encounter with real significance; both teams are heading to the post-season but their finishing position and, as such, their potential opposition, are yet to be determined.

But rather than speculating about the bigger picture, the Breakers were retaining their micro-focus in the build-up to tonight's game, preferring to figure out what went wrong in Townsville last week and make plans to immediately fix the problem.

That disappointing defeat could cost the Breakers top spot and home advantage throughout the playoffs but Dean Vickerman was determined it would cost his side nothing more. Which means, for the players and coaches, introspection.

"It's just us," Vickerman said. "That was something that came out of our review from the game.

"We've always been like that - we've been best when we're just focusing on what's the next thing for us to do, rather than what's just happened.

"When our activity and our communication is great, it's when we play great. We've just got to find those two things and how we get them motivated to make those two things happen. But for big games like this, there hasn't been a problem in doing that."

Tonight's certainly counts as a big game. Instead of the safety surrounding their playoff fates rendering the meeting meaningless, such a late-season affair arrives with the additional possibility of another, do-or-die meeting in a couple of weeks.

The same will be true when the Breakers play Perth on Sunday, and again when they clash with Cairns the following week. Those four teams will decide the title and, in their final regular season outings, it remains to be seen whether they choose to play at full potential or reveal little about their prospects.

For the Breakers, according to Vickerman, only the former will aid in their quest to win back the trophy they claimed for three years straight earlier in the decade.

3 things about the Breakers

• After two games as an absentee, Alex Pledger will make his return to the floor tonight, though his persistent toe injury will limit the centre to 10-15 minutes.

• The Adelaide front line of Daniel Johnson (2.10m), Brock Motum (2.08m) and Luke Schenscher (2.15m) are among the ANBL's most formidable, so Pledger's return will be timely.

• The Breakers' top three scorers have recently gone cold but Vickerman was confident Corey Webster, Cedric Jackson and Tom Abercrombie would soon heat up.