Hungry and excited: JackJumpers embrace the "unknown"

The Tasmania JackJumpers took some tough lessons from the loss to Melbourne United to hit back impressively in Perth, with coach Scott Roth looking forward to the wild ride with this new-look and young NBL26 outfit.

Straight after Thursday night's four-point home loss to Melbourne, two things stuck out to coach Roth – the 22 offensive rebounds that United pulled down and the 26 free throws that they attempted.

That was the immediate focus when they arrived at RAC Arena to take on the Wildcats on Saturday night. By the end of the evening the JackJumpers limited the 'Cats to 12 offensive boards and just the 14 foul shots.

The end result was a 75-72 Tasmania victory with those two areas crucial.

"It was a trainwreck with those two things against United and with the offensive rebounding they got after us a little bit here in the first five or six minutes, but our guys settled into the game and played even with them on the glass to take care of that area," Roth said.

"It was a conscious effort across the board for us to contain some of their good offensive rebounders."

What new import Bryce Hamilton did with 26 points on 12/19 shooting was exciting, but the thing pleased Roth most was what they took away from Perth.

The Wildcats only scored 72 points, only attempted 67 shots on shooting 40 per cent from the field and 24 from deep, and only had the 12 assists, while coughing up 13 turnovers.

Roth always knew it was going to be a thrill ride this season for the JackJumpers given the number of new faces on the team and with how young they have become.

There's great youth with the three new imports Hamilton (24), Tyger Campbell (25) and David Johnson (24), while Josh Bannan (24) and Nick Marshall (26) as two key local additions are still on the up.

The first two games have shown that there's plenty of growth to go with the group and there will be ups and downs along the way, but Roth can't wait to take the ride with this team.

"It's going to be exciting, because I think the excitement with our group from day one when we put the team together was the unknown," he said.

"We just didn’t know and we still don’t really know at the end of the day what it will look like two or three months from now.

"I think that revitalised a lot of players and a lot of people in Tasmania to see a different group out there, and we don’t know. I can't tell you what it's going to look like other than they are young and hungry, and the growth will be there."