Basketball: Breakers up against it without Vukona

Defender Mika Vukona hits the deck during Thursday's first game against the Perth Wildcats. Photo / Dean Purcell

The Breakers require one of the great sporting turnarounds to keep their season alive when they face the Perth Wildcats at Challenge Stadium tomorrow afternoon.

And they'll have to do it without Mika Vukona - their best rebounder and most tenacious defender.

Vukona suffered a grade-two medial ligament strain early in Thursday's 23-point thrashing on the North Shore and will be out for between one and three weeks.

With Perth having pounded the Breakers 47-26 in the rebound count and run up 101 points on their shaky defence, Vukona's absence looks to be a dagger wound from which the Breakers cannot recover.

"That is massive," Perth coach Rob Beveridge admitted. "[Vukona] is one of the hardest players in the league, physically and mentally. He is tenacious and gets on the glass. [Dillon] Boucher and Vukona are pretty special in those areas.

"When you take Vukona out, we won the possession game. It's as simple as that. They only had six offensive rebounds and he averages three or four a game, so that was absolutely massive for the Breakers."

Was - and is. BJ Anthony is a fiercely competitive stand-in, but he is no Vukona.

"Mika brings some attributes that are hard to replace, but that is the reality of the situation," Breakers coach Andrej Lemanis said. "The beauty of depth is that you can go ahead and cover for that sort of stuff and we need to now."

The formula for reversing Thursday night's result and forcing a game three in Auckland on Wednesday was simple enough, Lemanis said.

"At the end of the day we didn't put the ball in the basket," he said. "That is something that we do well, and I am confident we will do it well [tomorrow]."

The Breakers launched 31 three-point shots in the game-one defeat but connected with just seven.

Kirk Penney (2/7), Thomas Abercrombie (1/7) and Kevin Braswell (0/4) all struggled mightily, but Lemanis said there would be no change of approach.

"At the end of the day we play how we play," he said. "We have played that way all year. We are a good shooting basketball team and that will come around.

"There is not that much to adjust to. We have a look at the video ... we just have to go and make a couple of shots."

Beveridge, though, believed the Breakers would try to pressure his side further up the court.

"They have to make some adjustments, there is no question about that," he said.

"It is all about who has the best recovery and who travels the best. It is the team that is going to be most prepared and make the least amount of mistakes [that will win].

"Now we really have to go to a different level.

"They have got too many class players and it is a desperate time for the Breakers right now."

The Breakers will take some encouragement from a league-best 10-4 road record, however, their lone trip to Perth this season resulted in a 40-point defeat.