Posted on 10 July, 2018

The NWBL Cobra Men have finished the 2018 regular season in second place, after splitting a pair of home games against the Perth Wheelcats on the weekend.

Head Coach Shane Furness broke down the team’s weekend and performance so far this season ahead of the 2018 Finals series:

We finished with a loss in game one driven by a very poor defensive end throughout the game. The boys didn’t stick to our defensive process or stop chairs, resulting in big games for Shaun Norris (22 points) and Kim Robbins (37 points).

We knew our opportunity to finish second in regular season was on the line in game two, so we discussed our process and rallied as a team to ignite 100 percent effort. This inevitably drove aggressive, high pressure defence, which Perth had little answer for after the half time break.

When our guys play high intensity basketball and apply 100 percent effort, we are definitely super competitive and can beat any team in the competition. Taking two games from Wollongong on their home court mid-season, and defeating Brisbane in Brisbane was extremely important for us and helped us secure a second place finish. The key for our team is staying focussed on an aggressive style of basketball defensively and letting the process take care of itself.

The guys are extremely proud of what we have achieved thus far in 2018 and we feel we still haven’t played our best basketball consistently. We rallied through injuries to key players during the first half off the season while facing tough Brisbane and Wollongong road trips with a less than full strength team, and lost two starters for the season due to retirement and relocation. But despite this, our guys off the bench have been contributing and we’re hoping for a much better result in this years finals series.

Finally, it was great to finish the last half of the season playing at home in Kilsyth. We appreciate our friends, family and fans coming to support us!

The Cobras will take on the Queensland Spinning Bullets on Friday July 20 (6pm) in Brisbane, with the winner advancing to the 2018 Grand Final. If the Cobras fall short on Friday, they’ll have a second chance to secure a grand final berth, with the loser of the Cobras/Bullets game playing the winner of the Wollongong Rollerhawks and Red Dust Heelers matchup on Saturday night.