Melbourne Hits A Standstill

After Monday night’s loss to the bottom of the ladder Illawarra Hawks, Melbourne United’s finals chances continue to diminish.

United failed to snap their five-game losing streak after falling 93-79 to the Hawks, and coach Dean Vickerman is searching for answers on turning around their 5-10 record.

“We didn’t do a good enough job,” Vickerman simply declared.

“We’re a team right now that just fluctuates.

“We’re searching a little bit right now to get the positives to go get a win.

“We don’t have that commitment for long enough in possessions or in games right now.”

Melbourne were down at every quarter break on Monday night and didn’t hold a lead after the opening stanza.

The Hawks were able to capitalise on United’s performance, with Vickerman mentioning a running list of errors for the team.

“We get close and it’s either a defensive error, a turnover, a missed box out, or just one of these effort plays, things that you have to have a commitment to over the 24 seconds of the shot clock,” he said.

“We didn’t finish plays there for a while, 12 offensive boards for them and it turns into 18 points, and they just capitalised on the errors that we made.”

Import guard Rayjon Tucker stepped up and provided the best performance for United, scoring 27 points. Despite his efforts, Tucker is far from satisfied with the result.

“There’s no satisfaction, as a group we don’t like losing, I don’t like losing, we’ve got to find ways to win,” Tucker said.

“We lost and we’ve got to figure it out.

“We’ve got to play with desperation in my opinion, we’ve got to play with some physicality. It starts with defence, and I feel like we have the offensive power. Dialling in on the defensive side I think that’s how we can get it done.”

Shea Ili, a key player for United, has been out for most of the season with concussion. Vickerman gave an update on Ili’s recovery and is hopeful to have the defensive weapon back when they go head-to-head with Brisbane on Saturday.

“The plan is for him to be in the Brisbane game, he got a good workout at home today and that was really positive, he was able to play some one on one and do some things,” Vickerman said.

“He’s got to get through some of our practices and be able to compete with that physicality to get ticked off to play.”

Melbourne plays the Bullets on Saturday at 8:00pm AEDT.