Despite facing the daunting prospect of having to overturn a one-nil series deficit without two of their best players, Perth Redbacks coach David Harris has warned finals opponents Cockburn not to write them off.

The Redbacks lost game one of their best-of-three men's State Basketball League quarter-final series against the Cougars 104-98 last weekend and must win on the road on Saturday and Sunday to progress to the final four for the second-straight year.

Making the challenge much harder is Jesse Wagstaff's expected unavailability due to his Australian Boomers commitments and an ankle injury former Sydney Kings point guard Joel Wagner suffered in game one which has made him extremely unlikely to play in the rest of the series.

"We're proceeding as if they're not going to be there," Harris said.

"Joel's getting an MRI and that will tell us how bad it is. But we're not progressing with our planning with him in mind.

"He's been having pretty intense physio and he's trying to get up for the weekend. You can't ever count him out. If anyone can do it, it'd be him.

"And we're not expecting Jesse back. The way he's been playing with the Boomers, I think they're going to keep him around."

But Harris said he has a huge amount of confidence that the rest of the Redbacks squad would cover the absence of two of their biggest stars.

"Our group is very resilient. If anyone writes us off, it could be to their own detriment," he said.

"Over the last two seasons we've suited up our full team only five times. This year we haven't done it for one single game, so it's nothing new for us. If anyone counts us out, they'd be pretty silly.

"We've been punching above our weight all year. Despite all our injuries, we only finished one win short of our record last year, which says a lot about this group.

"We don't think we're going to have problems scoring the basketball. Even when Joel has been out this year, we haven't. It's going to be about what these young kids can give us on defence."

While Cockburn's Stanley Ocitti did the most damage in game one, Harris said shutting down some of the Cougars' role players would be their key focus.

"He's a very classy player and he's a hard guy to double team because you've got to be very respectful of their perimeter players," he said.

"We'll just try to make his job pretty tough, but it's more important to do a decent job on guys like Grant Davey and Damien Scott, the guys who are their role players, because Ocitti has shown he consistently puts up 25 or 30 points regardless of how much pressure you put on him."

Game two tips off at 7.30pm on Saturday at Wally Hagan Stadium, with game three (if required) on Sunday at midday.

Article by Jacob Kagi
Photo by Marg Prior

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