Wolves focus on who is there, not those absent heading into semis

AFTER winning last year's SBL championship, Ben Ettridge hoped to have added Bobby Evans and Greg Hire to the Joondalup Wolves team for the 2016 finals and despite their absence he remains supremely confident the remaining Wolfpack players can get the job done.

The Wolves dominated the 2015 Men's SBL season on the way to winning the championship with just the one import Kevin Davis surrounded by the likes of Trian Iliadis, Damian Matacz, Rob Huntington, Seb Salinas, Joel Questel, Sean Easther and Ben Ironmonger.

All were committed to return in 2016 with the only losses from the Grand Final team being the departed Louis Timms and retired Doug Gates.

Then the Wolfpack signed a second import in the athletic and long Evans while 2011 championship winning MVP Hire also returned and became a local player after bringing up his 150th SBL appearance.

However, things didn’t quite work out with Evans and he returned home and now Hire has been ruled out of the rest of the season having suffered a badly dislocated finger and Perth Wildcats duties ruling him out of being available for the Grand Final.

Ironmonger is the other player from the Grand Final who isn’t there following a knee injury but despite not having added an import and NBL championship winner like planned, the Wolves do have Reece Maxwell and Rhys Smyth back after being away in 2015.

On top of that, young players like Jordan Wellsteed have gone to another level for the Wolfpack in 2016 as they finished the regular season in second position, and then beat the Perth Redbacks in two games in the quarter finals ahead of the semi-final battle with the Willetton Tigers.

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Game 1 takes place at Joondalup Basketball Stadium this Saturday night and Ettridge is spending no time worrying about who won't be there, his full attention is on the 12 players he will have available as their quest for back-to-back championships heats up.

"The improvement of Jordan Wellsteed has been phenomenal for us, and Reece Maxwell and Phil Smyth are still quality 200-gamers so we are pretty happy with who's here and that's all I can worry about," Ettridge said.

"All we worry about now are the 12 guys who are in green and white and we will go out and give it a good crack. Now is the time for our depth to come to the fore and whoever pulls together the best over the last three weeks will be the one who wins at the end of the day."

Iliadis remains a player capable of leading the Wolves a long way again over the next three weeks having starred in the championship win of 2015.

While he certainly can't do it on his own, Iliadis' supreme shooting confidence and ability to get off shots quickly and from anywhere, and with there being nowhere he can't hit them from make him a standout in the league.

Ettridge remains delighted to have him at his disposal as one of the great SBL stars who appears good enough to be in the NBL.

"He is one of those guys and I've been very fortunate to coach Damian Matacz, Greg Hire and Brad Robbins. You look at a kid like Jackson Hussey along with Trian and Matt Adekponya, and we've got a really talented league," he said.

"It's a great league and the SBL is a phenomenal breeding ground for NBL players and at the moment there's only eight teams that we've got. I'm sure if there was 10 or 12 like the old days, a few more of these guys would be in the league. Trian is just a quality person from a quality family, and we love him to death."

While the Wolves had long ago come to terms with Evans not being the right fit as their second import, Ettridge and the Wolfpack were expecting to have Hire for the finals series.

When they initially signed him they didn’t think NBL duties would take him away from the Grand Final, but even when that happened they still expected to have Hire for the rest of the playoffs until his finger injury ruled him out last week after he played in the Game 1 win over the Redbacks.

"It's a dislocated finger and he's in quite a lot of pain. The pain meds he is on at the moment are making him feel a bit crook so he wasn’t at the game, but he was at practice on Thursday. That's a week by week one but we know he's not here for the grand final unfortunately," he said.

"We've pretty much been told that he's required on that road trip for the Wildcats and that's his job, and we knew that was a risk but we thought it was a one per cent risk.

"We will live with that but we have shown we can cover one guy as great as Greg is for us. When Reece Maxwell, Robbie and those guys all step up, we are pretty much back to the team we had last year."

The Wolves are now fully focused on Saturday night and Game 1 against the Tigers in what looms as a fascinating semi-final series against two teams who both won against the other on their home floor during 2016.

Ettridge is glad to have home-court advantage for Game 1 and then potentially Game 3 with the Wolfpack currently on a 27-game winning streak at Joondalup Basketball Stadium with the last loss on their home floor coming back on April 12 last year against the Geraldton Buccaneers.

"That goes way back to 2011 when I got here and one of the things we wanted to do was protect the Den," Ettridge said.

"We've got a pretty hardcore group of supporters who bleed green and they will turn up in their green scarves, and support us 100 per cent for the 48 minutes. I wouldn’t want to play anywhere else, however, we still have to get the job done on their home floor when we get there."

Article by Chris Pike
Photo by Serene-Elise Photography




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