在海裡飛翔的魚

Perth Wildcats coach Scott Fisher has declared himself ‘just satisfied’ with his team’s performance at the Virgin Blue Blitz, after Melbourne put them out in the semi-finals.

The Cats lost to the Melbourne Tigers 67-49 - despite beating them in the group stage - mostly due to a stellar performance from superstar veteran Darryl McDonald, who was a major factor in Melbourne’s successful championship win last season.

Fisher said a lack of consistency was the main problem for his charges.

“It’s not too bad, just satisfied,” he said on Sunday afternoon. “There was good and bad on the weekend.

“When we looked good, we looked really good, when we looked bad we looked ... bad.”

Part of the problem was getting used to playing Australian style basketball again.

“You can defend the Asian teams a little bit differently, and they defended us a little bit differently, that NBL teams, and I think we developed some bad habits during those games.

The NBL teams have better and stronger athletes, and it requires a slightly different approach to what we’re doing – you can get away with a fair few mistakes against the Asian teams, but you can’t afford as many mistakes or to be impatient against NBL teams.”

Fisher said that there was more good than bad when the tournament was looked as a whole.

“If you look at our stats for the course of the five games, we were the No. 1 free-throw shooting team at 86 per cent, we were third or fourth in field-goal percentage, our turnovers weren’t really that high, and Paul Rogers and Shaun Redhage played very well, both shooting at 65 per cent.

“Our rebounding could have been better, and our guards weren’t ... Pete Crawford did a good job coming off the bench, but Darren (Brooks) and Adam (Caporn) probably didn’t play up to expectations.

“Ben Hunt had some good moments, Justin (Brown) had some good moments, Jeff (Dowdell) had some good moments, and our bench scoring was about fourth or fifth out of all the teams, so we finished towards the top of most of the statistical categories.

“The only one that probably bothered me was offensive rebounding, and that was probably due to: one, the fact that we shot well, but two, we can probably do a better job going to the boards.”

Fellow forty-odd year-old McDonald’s continued success and stunning output isn’t tempting Fisher into thinking of a comeback, despite being forced to suit up several times last season in training.

“NO,” was Fisher’s response after a long pause.

“He’s a freak, a dead-set freak,” he said with a laugh.

Game 1: Bullets 57, Wildcats 45

Game 2: Wildcats 61, Tigers 53

Game 3: Wildcats 67, South Dragons 62

Quarter Final: Wildcats 63, Taipans 57 OT (54-54 FT)

Semi Final: Melbourne 67, Wildcats 49

Final: Bullets 53, Melbourne 39