After a tough few days on the road the Crazy John’s South Dragons are gearing up to make their return to the winner’s list with victory over the Gold Coast Blaze tomorrow night.
With just one game left to play to round out their nine-day road trip, the Dragons will tomorrow night hit the floor running at Gold Coast Convention Centre in pursuit of a win.
At the halfway mark of the season the Dragons face an upward climb towards the playoffs, but confidence is high the team can turn its season around.
“Of course we believe (we can still make the playoffs) but things are going to have to change pretty quickly,” playing-coach Shane Heal said after the weekend loss.
“Can we turn it around? Of course we can. I think we have the ability to be able to do it but we can’t throw out performances like we did tonight otherwise it just won’t turn around, and it was really disappointing because I think we can be a lot better team than that.”
Following their 29-point defeat at the hands of the Taipans, the team will head into tomorrow night’s clash with all guns blazing.
And for the Dragons, the key to a win lies in defence.
“We planned on coming out a lot harder than that and executing our defensive rules and we broke down in virtually every aspect that we try to take pride in and this was a very, very disappointing few days for us with New Zealand and now Cairns,” Heal said on Saturday night.
“Our plan was to be able to double their big guys inside and we did that, they threw it around and guys that you wouldn’t expect to make big shots made big shots in the first quarter.
“They’ve got some players out and they stepped up to that challenge and did a great job and we weren’t able to adjust after that.
“We got caught up with some of the calls that were going on and they shot a lot more free throws than us and the whole thing spiralled out of control. Even to halftime we felt like we could come back and we’ve done that in other games and given ourselves a chance, but they kept making shots and our defence wasn’t good enough.”
The Crazy John’s South Dragons take on the Gold Coast Blaze at 7:30PM (AEDT) tomorrow. Catch all the action LIVE on FOXSPORTS from 7:00PM.