Table of Plenty Coaches' Round Table: Round 7

Welcome to the Table of Plenty Coaches’ Round Table. This weekly article will provide you with some behind-the-scenes insight from our team of coaches regarding our performance from the previous round, thanks to Table of Plenty, the Official Snack Partner of Melbourne United.
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Cairns Taipans - Rhys Carter, Assistant Coach

“On the offensive end the boys did a great job of finding the open man and punishing their help defence. We got our feet in the paint and put pressure on the rim which created a lot of great shots. Possibly our most consistent game of the season, in our first game with a full squad which was really pleasing.”

United gained 15 points over the Taipans in the third quarter of their first rookie round contest, the biggest gain in margin they’ve had in any quarter of any game this season. 

Melbourne also had 12 more points off turnovers than Cairns in that game, a category that the Taipans have led the league in at 10 a game in NBL27. 

New Zealand Breakers - Ciro Barilla, Assistant Video Coordinator and Development Coach 

“I really liked our intent, especially with the short turnaround between games. We knew we had a talented team coming into our house and wanted to set the terms early. I thought our guys’ urgency from the opening tip was excellent. We were assertive and forced NZ into tough shots for most of the night.

“We expected a response and were able to weather the storm in the second quarter with details we will continue to clean up going into our next game vs Brisbane.  They’re a very capable scoring team who lead the league in 3PT%, so we wanted to make sure we were relentless with our contest pictures. We were able to hold them to their lowest scoring performance of the season. 

“I felt that offensively we had a willingness to move the ball and find the best shot possible. Still plenty to work on. We had a few lapses on both ends where we probably made things harder than they needed to be, but overall a really positive performance to build on.”

Melbourne United’s versatility on both sides of the ball were on full display against the breakers. 

Defensively, Melbourne had a league wide season-high eight blocks as a team, whilst only fouling a club season low 15 times in the contest. 

In NBL27, the Breakers have led the league in three point percentage; against United, they shot just 20% from deep, 13% lower than Melbourne in the contest and 19% lower than their season average. 

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Head Coach Jacob Chance’s Final Word

Cairns Taipans

“I thought Cairns were arguably playing the best basketball in the competition leading into that game. They're athletic, they’re big, they get after you, they shoot a lot of threes, for our guys to weather that storm in the first quarter, we were doing a lot of good things.

“We had big contributions across the board. We had five turnovers in the first, only three turnovers in the second. We tidied up a bit of the ball security. It was a credit to our

group. We came in at halftime, hit reset, came out and doubled down…we had been in that position with Cairns before; up 12 going into the fourth quarter. So to see us push that lead out and maintain it was really impressive.”

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New Zealand Breakers

“They had 39 at halftime and I thought there was a world where we could have

kept them under 30 in that first half.

“We just had a couple of communication breakdowns. We were a little undisciplined on some shot fakes that gave up dunks at the rim.

“I felt like when we took those things away and just sat down and really guarded the ball, they had a tough time scoring and we got more of that in the second half. Hence why we're able to keep them to 35 for the second hal‍e didn’t make every shot we wanted to, but we took a lot of good ones. Our intensity and intent for the full 40 minutes on the floor was at its best in that game. There’s a lot of good to carry over from that double header going forward.”

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Melbourne United next take the court on Saturday November 7th as the home team Inside John Cain Arena against the Brisbane Bullets. Tip off is at 7:30pm.

Get your tickets here via AXS.

If you can’t make it on the night, the game will be live on ESPN via Kayo and Disney+ or Channel 9 and 9NOW.

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