SOME SBL men's coaches shared their thoughts on how their respective 10th round weekends of the 2014 season went.

MEN'S
VORIAN AGENCY EAST PERTH EAGLES
Coach – Adam Forde

The final score doesn’t give the South West Slammers the credit they deserve. They held us to 39 per cent shooting and did a great job targeting some of our key contributors. And for the most part restricted our offence in the half court by daring us to shoot from the perimeter.

It makes my job easier as a coach knowing that I can turn to players like Donlagic, Kisselev and now Mathiang when teams look to target Jervis and Williamson. But we still have a lot of glaring weaknesses that we need to work on if we want to secure a spot in the eight.

PERTH REDBACKS
Coach – Nik Lackovic

We had to make some minor adjustments obviously without having Joel Wagner out there and we are missing one of our back up big guys Zach Makavilitogin as well. Steve Vigor didn’t suit up all weekend either so the three of those are really challenging our depth. We've isolated and broken down a few areas and one of those was for the players to step up and share the responsibility.

Stan is the kind of quality player and guy who works extremely hard. Because of that he was rewarded on Friday night and he wore a lot of that responsibility personally. He came across to me before the game and looked me in the eye, shook my hand and said that he had this one for me. I can't speak highly enough of him.

It was a tough night on Saturday. Rockingham is at the top of the table for a reason and they have a couple of very good leaders in that group in both Taylor and Cooper, and they don’t do anything flamboyant or flash but they play with hard and consistent effort. They have been together for a little while now and you put into the mix now a Ryan Godfrey and it gives them a little bit more hardness and another perimeter threat. We made some adjustments and we were challenged with our depth in the big men department and Dennis was in foul trouble. Cooper got away from us a little bit, but shooting 18 foul shots hurt us a bit.

ORANGE AUTOS ROCKINGHAM FLAMES
Coach – Mark Utley

Thanks to Nik Lackovic and the Redbacks for letting us join together to pay tribute to a true SBL great in John Gardiner, still the hardest coach to coach against and a true gentleman that will be greatly missed by all.

The Redbacks were very good and with reinforcements coming will be a real contender this year. Cooper was outstanding against a quality import in Okoye and Taylor was also good for us. It was great to get the win.

Photo by Serene Maisey