Basketball: Breakers' home games 'make or break'

Ben Pepper is a rare exception in a Breakers team generally short on experience. Picture / Richard Robinson

The Breakers have three consecutive games at home and need to establish some winning form, or watch their playoff hopes slip, coach Andrej Lemanis accepts.

And he admits he's still struggling to work out why the team cannot compete in the ANBL for 48 minutes.

"There are times when it looks like we are making good strides towards being a pretty good basketball team but then we sit back ... it's hard to put my finger on it. It's the amount of time it takes us to address things when they're going wrong for us, when the defence is crumbling."

Time-outs were not always working. "We have to take a stand when things aren't going our way."

The Breakers have contested long stretches of their games but at this level, allowing the other side too much ball is a killer. They are too often guilty of either not competing for rebounds and loose balls, of handling errors or of poor passing and turnovers that allow opponents to create big points gaps quickly.

The players had been shown plenty of video of the games to identify when and how they switched off, Lemanis said. But lack of experience remained a big factor.

"We have two guys in Ben Pepper, who has been around the league for a while, and Brant Bailey, who has been around a lot of leagues, and we have a whole lot who have two years experience or less," he said. "It's a learning process."

He was not about to make changes to the game plan, starting team or the bench. "I've never yet seen a coach switch week-to-week and it work. I think throwing everything out now would be useless." He believed in the plan they had but knew results must come.

"There's no easy games in this league, particularly when you are one from six. We need to bring our best in every one of these home games and, again, that's part of the learning process at this level."

The West Sydney Razorbacks come first at Trusts Stadium at noon on Sunday, followed by Tony Rampton's Wollongong Hawks the following Sunday, then the Adelaide 36ers on October 19.

The Razors have a new "big" in American Joel Cornette, a 208cm, 109kg centre who played for Butler University in the US, replacing Nick Horvath, who may be out for another six weeks.

Cornette arrived last Thursday and went straight to training.

"He did well in his early sessions but we need to give him a bit of time to settle in," said coach Mark Watkins.

"He won't get a good feel for things straight away because we've had a few key players unable to train with injury - Cam Rigby, James Harvey and Clint Reed." All three will travel and probably play.

The Breakers have only one injury concern, a knee strain suffered by Bailey, who is becoming one of their better scoring options. He, too, is expected to recover in time for Sunday's game.

Long and short of it

The ANBL's tallest player is Hunter Pirates centre Jason Eversteyn at 2.16m and the smallest is Perth Wildcats' Daniel Bailey, 1.73m.

The title-favourite Brisbane Bullets are the smallest team in the league with an average height of 1.955m, and the oldest, at an average 29.6 years, and their Melbourne import, Mark Bradtke, is the NBL's heaviest player at 129kg.

The average weight of all players is 97.2kg and the average height is 1.998m.

Oldest player is Tigers guard Darryl McDonald at 41 and the youngest is Wildcat Jeff Dowdell, 18.

The Breakers are the sixth-tallest team, averaging 1.986m.

Heat re-signings

The North Harbour Heat have re-signed Canadian-Kiwi and Breakers development player Brent Charleton and last season's top-scorer Haydn Allen for another two seasons. Allen, 25, averaged 21 points in eight games last season before suffering a bad thigh injury while Charleton, 23, came in late and played 10 games for an average 14 points.