Wollongong coach Gordie McLeod took enough out of the loss in Game 1 of the NBL Grand Final series in Perth to expect his Hawks team to bounce back at home on Tuesday and force a decider back at Challenge Stadium.
Wollongong started strongly in Friday night's game racing to a 13-7 lead, but by midway through the second quarter his team had slipped 15 points behind.
Luke Martin then stepped up to lead a revival off the bench and the Hawks were able to regain the lead halfway through the third period, but Perth had just too much class on the night with several Wollongong stars down.
While Martin had 11 points off the bench and rookie Tim Coenraad stepped up with 16 points including four three-pointers, Glen Saville, Larry Davidson and Cameron Tragardh only combined for 15 points on 6-of-27 shooting for the night.
Those numbers will rarely earn a home playoff victory and now Wollongong must win at home again on Tuesday to send the Grand Final series into a deciding Game 3 next Friday.
McLeod acknowledged that he had several players down, but was still proud of his players and saw enough to take confidence with into Tuesday's game.
"We showed a lot of character throughout the whole game. At different stages we got behind, but we kept fighting and hanging in there. I was a little disappointed that we had a few guys down and that hurt us, but we should take a lot out of the game," McLeod said.
"We certainly played them a lot tougher than the last time we were here. We'll take that as a real positive and now for us it's about recovery. That's going to be a really big part with a game on Tuesday, so it's about recovering, evaluation and adjustments for us."
The Hawks were restricted to just 64 points and McLeod credits much of that to Perth's stifling defence, but he is confident that if more of his players step up on Tuesday that they will get the result.
"We'll have to work a lot harder to get our bigs some touches and catches. We're pretty happy with our defence to hold them to 75 and now we have to try and find ways to loosen up our offence and get our bigs involved in what we want to do," he said.
"It's more the sum of what we get from everyone and not one or two guys. We are very dependent on everyone bringing something to the table and we didn’t have enough guys doing that. If we don't get that on Tuesday night, just being at home doesn’t mean anything."
While 24-year-old Coenraad was pleased with his individual efforts, it never makes up for losing.
"I'd take all that away for a win. It's good to play well, but I'd much rather win the game. I played some minutes and felt I could have got some more rebounds as well, so especially at the defensive end we have to do that better," Coenraad said.
"They out-rebounded us, but defensively we still held them to 75 points on their home floor so our defence wasn't that bad, but they play a good brand of defence. We have to win two on the trot to get a championship, so that's what we've got to do."
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