Tim Braban | 4th June 2011| The Chronicle

THE Toowoomba Mountaineers men's team might have slumped to three consecutive defeats, but captain Mike McDaniel isn't too worried.

For McDaniel these are the losses the Mountaineers need to have if they are going to be competitive at the end of the Queensland Basketball League season.

“We're finding out who we are,” McDaniel said.

“You need to understand when you lose it can be very confronting. We're finding out a lot more about our team and that is a blessing in disguise.”

After two tough games on the road against Ipswich and the undefeated Gold Coast Rollers, Toowoomba has its best chance to win away from home tonight against a South West Metro team still searching for its first win of the QBL season.

The Mountaineers were too strong for South West in a pre-season trial match, but McDaniel knows the Pirates will be an entirely different proposition this time around, with current Gold Coast NBL player Brendan Teys and former NBL big-man Steven Broom coming into the South West line-up.

The match-up between the two guards in Teys and Toowoomba scoring machine James Legan will go a long way to determining who takes away the two points tonight.

Legan was uncharacteristically quiet against Gold Coast last week, with Adam Gibson restricting him to just five points.

McDaniel is expecting Legan to return to his sharp-shooting best tonight.

“That was probably James's worst game on Australian soil and he's afforded that,” McDaniel said.

“But that guy never has two bad games in a row and I'm expecting him to be fierce.”

And despite losing three straight, McDaniel says the team is full of confidence after mixing it with league leader Gold Coast for three of the four quarters last Sunday.

“We believe we can win. We've gone through our baptism under fire.”

The Toowoomba Mountaineers women's side will be focused on a four-quarter performance when it takes on South West at 5pm.

Last week against the Gold Coast Toowoomba fell away in the final half of the game and assistant coach Graeme Russell says the team can ill-afford to do that tonight.

“We've been in most of the games. We had a good start against Gold Coast and were matching them, but in some two-minute periods we just dropped intensity,” Russell said.

Russell says the players need to shut down one of the league's best players in Catherine Scanlon, who is averaging 20 points and 18 rebounds per game, to have a chance of breaking Toowoomba's losing streak.

“They've all got individual goals they want to achieve and as we play together more it's about improving and getting better,” Russell said.