Roth's promise to "be better"

Chris Goulding mentioned United’s desire to "be better" every quarter following his side’s Game 1 win over Tasmania. For Scott Roth and the JackJumpers though, being better isn’t a hope – it’s a necessity.

The JackJumpers will look to defend the island when they welcome Melbourne to MyState Bank Arena on Friday night, where a home defeat could sound the first death knell on the side’s title hopes.

Should United emerge with a win they will take a 2-0 series lead back to John Cain Arena on Sunday and have the chance to raise the championship trophy by the end of the week.

“It sounds cliché, but we just have to be better across the board if we want to push this series any farther,” Roth told SEN.

“I think the biggest thing is we’ll just be 50 per cent better than we were in that game, because we had a hell of a time travelling back and forth between Perth and Hobart with the time changes and horrendous flights.

“We get an emotional win in Perth and then a long trip back to Hobart and less than 24 hours later we’re back in Melbourne playing in the [Championship Series]. I think there was some mental and physical fatigue from the emotions of that and I thought we were just a little flat through the entire game.

“We weren’t sharp in a lot of areas, and we were a step behind. I think we were just flat emotionally and flat with some energy, and I’m not sure what will happen, but I believe we’ll be much bounce and much livelier about how we go about our business.”

Roth said there were a handful of things that jumped out at him in the post-game review of last week’s Game 1 loss, and they have little to do with any possible talent gap between the two teams.

After a tight and contested first quarter, United established a solid lead throughout the remainder of the game, before they extended the margin in the final term to run out as eventual 23-point victors.

“For us there were two or three things that really jumped out to us that have nothing to do with individual talent, other than the fact Chris (Goulding) is going to shoot x number of threes regardless of how he’s being guarded,” Roth said.

“For us, our rebounding was not at a level that it needed to be, and they got a few what we call daggers, and reload threes which are always quite dangerous, and we were not very good in defensive transition which we’re usually better at.

“The third thing for us is probably the thing that is most common for us is we’re up the floor putting pressure on teams in general, and we were just a step behind and had some breakdowns, and bled points in those areas too.

“Chris is going to get his three-point attempts up, we had a few guys walk in really unguarded – Delly (Matthew Dellavedova) jumps off the top of my head – LT (Luke Travers) had one, and when those start to go in everything else starts to become a problem.

“If we can tighten up our transition defence, have our pressure up the floor be smarter and not bleed points there, you have to rebound to win a championship and we didn’t do a good job of taking care of our defensive glass.”

Game 2 of the Championship Series between Tasmania and Melbourne will tip off at 7:30pm AEDT on Friday night, live on ESPN via Kayo Freebies, 10 Peach and 10 Play.