BOXSCORE

By Chris Pike, Pagemasters

The Perth Wildcats have cruised to a 14th straight win inside Perth Arena beating the Wollongong Hawks 93-65 in Game 1 of the semi-final series on Thursday night.

With Cam Tovey playing a cameo role after announcing he'd be hanging up his boots on Thursday morning, the Wildcats took the best that a fighting Hawks line-up could throw at them early in the game to end up comfortably winners.

Tovey had not scored more than six points in a game this season, but hit 11 on Thursday with his fellow small forward Greg Hire outstanding with 10 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.

It was an even contribution from the Wildcats with Matt Knight (15 points, 7 rebounds), Kevin Lisch (15 points, 4 assists), Damian Martin (10 points), Shawn Redhage (9 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds) and Rhys Carter all big contributors.

Coach Rob Beveridge was most pleased with his team's stingy defence, but is still searching for improvement.

"We are so pedantic on minimising the errors and they nailed some threes early but once we tightened that up we were in complete control of the game," he said.

"We fouled way too much in the third quarter and that gives them a little bit of hope, but the intensity level we played at and the way we rebounded and shared the ball was just exceptional in that final quarter in particular."

Adris Deleon and Tim Coenraad both hit 16 points for Wollongong, Dave Gruber contributed 11 and Australian junior national team star Mirko Djeric posted an exciting eight in what was a tough night for his team.

"I feel like we've gone 25 rounds with the master blaster and that's what we knew we would have to go through," Hawks coach Gordie McLeod said.

"There were some things that were real priorities for us coming into this game that we felt we had to do well. One was rebounding because last time we played here we gave up 20 offensive boards and tonight we gave up 19. That's way too much possession.

"That was a real key for us and the other thing was dealing with the full-court pressure and still getting into our offence and being able to run something. When you look at the game and points off turnovers, points in the paint and second chance points, we just got totally out-worked."

The Hawks started strongly with Deleon nailing the first five points of the game and then a three to Coenraad had them up 9-4, but the Wildcats worked their way on top through their backcourt with Martin, Lisch and Carter all nailing threes to see the home side up 21-18 at quarter-time.

Tovey then stepped up with his best moments of the season hitting an open three to put Perth up 28-23 and then taking a charge down the other end leading to a Lisch basket.

The 'Cats led 45-31 at half-time with Tovey and Martin contributing 17 points between them with just three missed shots.

Wollongong again came out strong to start the second half with a three to Forman and basket to Deleon to close the margin to nine, but every time they made a good play the Wildcats answered down the other end to still lead by 14 at three quarter-time.

By the time Redhage opened the last quarter with a three, the contest was all but over and the Wildcats went on to win by 28, their only concern coming when Knight provided an injury scare.

"He tweaked his ankle, but Dave (Philpot, physio) checked him out and said he was good to go and we put him back out there," Beveridge said.

"Matty has had a history of these injuries, but we showed him that he was OK by playing another few minutes."

Perth Wildcats 93 (Knight, 15, Lisch 15, Tovey 11)
Wollongong Hawks 65 (Deleon 16, Coenraad 16, Gruber 11)

Crowd: 10,904 at Perth Arena