R7 Preview: SE Melbourne Phoenix v Illawarra Hawks

When: 2.00pm (AEDT), Sunday 28 February

Where: John Cain Arena, Melbourne

Broadcast: SBS Viceland; Sky Sports NZ; SBS On Demand; Twitch

The last time

South East Melbourne 98 (Gliddon 15, Adnam 15, Moore 15, Sykes 15, Creek 15) d Illawarra 82 (Adel 17, Bairstow 15, Harvey 13) – February 7, State Basketball Centre, Melbourne

This was a fascinating game three weeks ago in Melbourne where South East Melbourne handed Illawarra its first loss of the season. The Phoenix played strong, physical defence and on the back of that limited the impact of hot Hawks scorers Justinian Jessup and Tyler Harvey. Then at the other end, the number of options to score that South East Melbourne had meant that they cut the Hawks to pieces in so many different ways. Five different players all scored 15 points apiece and it showed just what the Phoenix are capable of while it was the start of a run with the Hawks now losing four of six games following their 4-0 start.

The now

Both the Phoenix and Hawks have tough losses they are looking to bounce back from to open Sunday's double-header of the NBL Cup to close the second week of action in the tournament within a season.

South East Melbourne will be playing its first game since losing to the Adelaide 36ers on Tuesday night. They will need to bounce back now against Illawarra without the presence of star point guard Keifer Sykes as well who has been ruled out with an ankle injury joining the already sidelined Adam Gibson and Dane Pineau with Ryan Broekhoff still in the middle of his two weeks of quarantine and not yet available.

The Phoenix appeared to have been building momentum having won back-to-back games for the first time this season leading into that game with the 36ers following wins against Perth and Brisbane by 25 and 16 points, but they took a step back to now sit on a 5-5 overall record this NBL season and to be 1-1 in the NBL Cup with 7.5 points to their credit from their opening two appearances.

The Hawks are a fascinating story so far this season under the tutelage of legendary coach Brian Goorjian. They started off on fire winning their opening four games while playing exciting basketball led by the scoring of Tyler Harvey and Justinian Jessup, all-round talents of Justin Simon and emerging inside presence of Sam Froling. They've got more talented on paper since with the returns from injury of Deng Adel and Cam Bairstow, but the wins have stopped flowing.

After winning those first four games, Illawarra has now lost four of its last six matches including a narrow defeat in the NBL Cup at the hands of the Brisbane Bullets just on Friday night. They have less than 48 hours now to bounce back to try and improve on their 6-4 overall season record and being 1-2 in the NBL Cup having claimed eight of the 21 points that have been on offer.

The stats

- Expect plenty of points in this one with the Phoenix the highest-scoring team this season going at 91.5 points a game while the Hawks rank third at 90.5 a game. They are two of just three teams averaging more than 90 points a game this season

- The Hawks are leading the league in blocked shots this season at 4.9 a game while the Phoenix rank last in that category with just 2.5. Yanni Wetzell and Ben Moore are averaging 0.9 a game for South East Melbourne but Illawarra has AJ Ogilvy at 1.4 a game, Justin Simon 0.9, Cam Bairstow 0.9, Sam Froling 0.8 and Justinian Jessup 0.6.

- Rebounding is another area of great contrast between the two teams. The Hawks lead the league with 39.4 boards a game while the Phoenix are last at 35.8. Leading the way for Illawarra is Cam Bairstow with 7.3, Sam Froling 7.2, Justin Simon 6.1 and AJ Ogilvy 5.0. South East Melbourne has Mitch Creek collecting 7.8, Ben Moore 7.6 and Yanni Wetzell 7.0.

The key men

Kyle Adnam – The absence of Keifer Sykes and with Adam Gibson still missing means that extra responsibility falls onto his shoulders in the back court if the Phoenix are to hand the Hawks another loss on Sunday. The good news is that he's having the best season of his NBL career to date going at 13.4 points and 2.5 assists a game. The bad news is that he now won't have the support of Sykes who has been a standout at both ends of the floor, and without the veteran influence of Gibson. He now will be relied on to run the offence, continuing to score and playing defence on Tyler Harvey in a huge task against the Hawks.

Tyler Harvey – He has made a huge impact on the NBL already in his first season but if Illawarra is to bounce back with a strong winning performance against the Phoenix on Sunday, then he needs to be at the forefront of everything. Coming up against the Keifer Sykes defence saw him struggle to just 13 points in their last meeting, but there's no Sykes this time around and he has to take full advantage of that, be aggressive and lead his Hawks team to a victory.

The quotes

South East Melbourne Phoenix coach Simon Mitchell has seen enough so far this season to know that what his team is capable of when things all click, but they need to continue to work on finding that consistency starting Sunday against the Hawks.

"I think there’s been some really good signs of what we can become and I think there’s also been some reminders of where we’ve come from and what we can be if we don’t do the right things at all times," Mitchell said.

"I feel like our upside is really big. There’s still quite a gap between our best and worst basketball, so I guess that’s for us to figure out ways to bring those closer together. There’s a bit of a pattern with us; when we play physically on the defensive end, boxing out and taking care of the defensive boards, there is a tendency for us to play close to our best basketball."

The Phoenix delivered a tremendous performance last time they did face the Hawks to hand Illawarra their first loss of the season at the time but Mitchell knows it will be tougher this time around especially in the absence of Keifer Sykes.

"We’ve got to make sure we do a good job like we did last time of limiting some of their key players and we’ve found a few things maybe they struggle with from a defensive standpoint that we feel we can exploit on the offensive end. It’s really just finding these little cracks and making sure we seal a few of our own cracks," Mitchell said.

"Our team’s going to look a little bit different. Keifer hurt his ankle at the end of last game, he’s having scans and some tests and we’re still waiting on exactly where he’s sitting so there could be different guys with different responsibilities.

"He did an amazing job on (Tyler) Harvey last time, I think he only scored two points on him when they were directly matched up and that was not even Keifer’s fault. He did a tremendous job there so there may be elements of us we’ll need to chip in and cover for."

Illawarra coach Brian Goorjian feels like his team's decision-making in recent games hasn’t been the same as it was earlier in the season which has been the biggest factor in the turnaround in fortunes.

"As you go through this thing and being on the road and dealing with that, it just looks like over the last four or five days that it's mounting. We're just not playing with the energy, the passion and the communication that we did over the last four days," Goorjian said. 

"We were on the road waiting, waiting, waiting to play and came in with a lot of energy and juice, and won all that stuff like loose balls, rebounds, deflections. But this last game, a deciding factor was that it affected our decision-making. I thought we were horrendous on our decisions to push the ball. 

"We didn’t want to play them in the half-court, we wanted to play them in the full-court, and wanted to get stops and run. We got opportunities there out on the break but our decision-making was horrendous. The deciding factor was the last possession and I was just shocked. Everybody knows that with 15 seconds to go, you pull that thing out and get the last shot of the game and I think that typified our game."

The physicality of the league is a significant change that Goorjian has noticed from when he left to his return now, and he sees that making things especially challenging for Tyler Harvey and Justinian Jessup at the moment.

"Everyone is pressuring them in the back court, face guarding them and not letting Tyler especially handling the ball and making other ball carriers handling the ball. I just think with both of them it's real, real physical. I'm learning just being here that it's not what I'm used to and it's really had to free those guys up off the ball," Goorjian said. 

"The physicality is wearing on Tyler at times. Justinian is getting better and better, and this is a new team and he's getting stuff in transition but it's really hard to free him up with the way the defences play here in the half-court. It's just very, very difficult. If you look at the shots he is making, they are in transition off stops before the defence can get set. He's running that floor real hard and finding open spots, and he's a great shooter so hopefully that side of it continues."