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Shawn Redhage
Cats make it six
18/08/2006
A tired-looking Perth Wildcats have belted an exhausted Niigata Albirex from Japan's BJ League by 27 points at the Asian Professional Basketball tournament in Taiwan on Thursday night to make it six straight wins.

The Cats led from the start, and the Japanese team, hampered by having just eight players for the entire competition, simply couldn’t go with the bigger, fitter and more skilful Cats, who eventually won 84-57 after blowing the game away with a 32-14 third term.

Once again, coach Scott Fisher was able to spread the load around, with only point guard Adam Caporn playing more than 24 minutes.

Shawn Redhage (19 points, 8 rebounds) and Darren Brooks (18 points, 4 rebounds) continued their good form, while star tall Paul Rogers snared nine rebounds in a mere 14 minutes of playing time.

Young bigman Justin Brown continued his rapid improvement with 11 points and 12 boards in just 22 minutes, while Brad Robbins earned praise from the coach for his ferocious attitude.

The coach was happy with some parts of the game and less thrilled with others.

“It was a pretty wild game, as all these seem to be,” he said. “Our defence, for the most part, was quite solid.

“We held them to 11, 16, 14 and 16 (points in each term), but offensively we got stagnant – we took a couple of rushed shots, and we still had more turnovers that we should have in that game, but the defence is what’s going to win it for us, and when our defence is solid like that it does create some baskets for us.

“I loved Brad Robbins energy tonight, Darren Brooks had quite a good game, the two big guys were really unstoppable in the middle there - you add up their stats and you’ve got great work on the inside.”

The coach admitted the schedule of eight matches in nine days in very oppressive conditions was really starting to wear on the team.

“Fatigue is playing a little part, but I still say it shouldn’t affect us any more than it affects anyone else - we should be the fittest team, we should be the stronger team, and I think we are.

“I see it more as mental fatigue than physical – we’re stuck in these hotel rooms, it’s too hot to go outside, we’ve been here a while now, and it’s a bit of a test.

“We’ve just got to be better than the test, and be able to focus when we’re on court.”

Friday night will be a vastly different proposition, however, as the Cats come up against the LG Sakers from Korea's KBL.

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