United close to locking in final roster spot

With one spot remaining on United’s roster for the NBL25 season, Saturday night’s pre-season Throwdown against the South East Melbourne Phoenix will likely determine who makes up the final spot.

Across pre-season camp, a number of Development and Training Players have been putting in the hard work, looking to potentially make up the last spot on Dean Vickerman’s roster.

Ahead of Saturday, the reigning Coach of the Year winner said he will be closely analysing the game to see who could fit best with the rest of his lineup.

“I’ve been kind of holding on to it for a while to see what our roster looks like if there is foul trouble, if there’s something else, what do we need out of that 11th spot on the roster,” he explained.

“I’ve learnt some things from the other night and I think I’ll learn a little bit more on Saturday.”

Despite going down in their first game of the pre-season Vickerman said Tuesday’s clash against the Bullets was very useful in terms of continuing to grow as a group.

“There were some really good things, like the way we started the game, and then some issues to work through in the middle of the game, but I liked the way we finished.

“The intensity was good, I liked the rebounding, we tried not to put in too much set-play action, we tried to just play out of our motion and have people understand how to play together.”

After missing Tuesday’s contest, the quartet of Matthew Dellavedova, Chris Goudling, Ian Clark and Marcus Lee are all expected to suit up against the Phoenix.

“All those four are expected to play… they had done some work and possibly could have seen some minutes the other night but I think they are far more prepared to play this one.”

Fans can tune into the game from 7pm on Saturday evening via the Melbourne United App.