Basketball: Breakers face uphill battle to make playoffs

Tom Abercrombie. Photo / Getty Images

The Breakers need to take the pressure off their main shooters if they are to make the playoffs.

The pre-season favourites were beaten 76-72 by the league-leading Perth Wildcats in Perth on Friday night on top of their 83-78 defeat to the Wollongong Hawks on Wednesday night to round out a miserable road trip.

Friday night's loss was their third on the trot and their fourth in five games. With seven games of the season remaining, they are two wins behind the race for the top four play-offs.

"We still control our own destiny," Dillon Boucher said yesterday. "It's going to be tough. It's going to be an uphill battle. But we are still capable of pushing for the play-offs. We just need to get that winning culture back and things will go from there."

That will need to happen on Thursday night when the Breakers host the last-placed Melbourne Tigers before taking on Adelaide at home the following Thursday. It's imperative they win their games at North Shore Events Centre if they are to figure in post-season play.

They have won six of their 10 games at home this season but, worryingly, lost their last three at a venue where they are rarely beaten. They have beaten both Melbourne and Adelaide in Auckland this season.

What they will need is greater scoring input from the whole squad. Against Perth, Kirk Penney (27 points) and CJ Bruton (24) were excellent but the rest contributed only six field goals between them.

Paul Henare was the Breakers' third highest scorer with eight points while centre Rick Rickert snared six. Tony Ronaldson shot just one from eight from the field and Australian international Oscar Forman a disappointing zero from four.

They certainly missed the injured Tom Abercrombie, who has chipped in with 9.5 points a game this season and also has the ability to do something special at both ends of the court. Abercrombie could be out for up to four weeks with an ankle injury.

"It's a concern," Boucher admitted about the inability of others to score.

"A lot of our offence is based around getting [Penney and Bruton] shots - but we need others to contribute better to take the pressure off them.

"It's more a case of when the opportunity presents itself, people need to make those shots because otherwise other teams will press CJ and Kirk even more."

"We really felt that we played well against Perth.

"Our defence was a lot better than it has been and we did all we needed to win the game but we turned over too much ball and they closed it out."

"We had the chance to win both [games]. It's been a trend for us this season, not closing out matches, and that's something that we have historically done really well."