By Aaron Young
My initial reaction is that we played a solid game for about three quarters of the night. We let ourselves down in the key moments, however.
It didn’t feel like a full team performance. We relied a lot on our key piece when we really needed others to step up.
Weeksy and Rob were terrific again. Rob, with five blocks, was a force at the defensive end and Weeksy brought great energy and pace to our play. He had a great offensive night.
Charlie Dalton also brought great energy for us and gave us some really good minutes.
It was the first time all season that we have ran into a bit of foul trouble and we didn’t handle it very well. Reuben [Te Rangi] fouled out and we relied too heavily on a couple of guys.
Having a loss like this early in the season can be a good thing for a team and it is up to us to make sure that we come out the other side in a better place as a result.
How we respond now is big.
There is no better chance to show that we have learned than by facing last year’s defending champions on our home court at Eventfinda Stadium.
They were the team that beat us on that court in the final last season, so we have a lot to motivate us this week.
I’m certainly looking forward to getting back onto home court in front of our home fans. We want to protect our home court and make the place a fortress this season and we have the prime opportunity to do that on Thursday night.