Taipans take positives from extra week at home

The CQUniversity Cairns Taipans have taken the positives from having an extra week at home to prepare themselves for a month in Melbourne at the NBL Cup as they get ready to open proceedings on Saturday afternoon.

It has turned out to be quite the eventful last week for the Taipans. 

Firstly they bounced back last Monday night with a drought breaking and impressive win at home against the New Zealand Breakers to end what was a run of seven of the opening eight games of the 2021 NBL season being played at the Cairns Pop-Up Arena.

They were then meant to head to Victoria on Friday to firstly play a Round 5 game in Bendigo against United before remaining in Melbourne from there over the next month to take part in the NBL Cup.

But then all of a sudden with the Taipans all packed and ready to go on Friday night, the news broke of another COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne and that the state was going into lockdown for the next five days.

Saturday's game was then cancelled and rather than fly into a state in lockdown where the Taipans would have been hotel bound, they elected to not fly and to remain home for another week.

It has now been confirmed that Victoria's lockdown will end when Wednesday night hits midnight and the NBL Cup is going to be going ahead as scheduled with the Taipans first up on Saturday against the Illawarra Hawks.

Given the Taipans had planned and packed for five weeks away when they arrived at the airport last Friday, it did create for some immediate interruptions to the plans everyone had put in place.

But ultimately an extra week at home is never a bad thing and from a basketball perspective, Taipans coach Mike Kelly certainly expects it to have some positives.

"I think we've been mentally preparing for a glitch in scheduling and being ready for change, but until it actually happens you don't know what it really feels like," Kelly said.

"We took a step back and evaluated with where we were at with no game on the weekend and focused on ourselves. We came in and had a great training on our game day that was going to be on Saturday down in Bendigo, instead we came in here and went at it. 

"We challenged each other and competed, and in the end it has been as positive as can be to just go against each other and get some guys minutes that they might not have got down in the game on the weekend."

Having an extra week to use to their advantage of the practice floor is something that now in hindsight Kelly is tremendously grateful for.

While there were better signs in the win over the Breakers last up, there hadn’t been a lot of time to work on things in between games with eight games in the opening four rounds so Kelly has been grateful now for the whole group to be able to regroup, refresh and recharge.

"Since we heard the announcement that we weren’t going down to play in Bendigo last weekend we've had three great training sessions where we've been able to focus on ourselves knowing we don’t have a game tomorrow," Kelly said. 

"We're trying to use the time the best we can to be prepared and it's almost like a mini-camp during the season so if there has been a positive, that's been it.

"There's things that we weren’t doing consistently well. We defended very well against New Zealand in that last game and we are able to take that as a positive now and build on it. 

"We still had many improvement areas and we've been able to address those and build on them, and hopefully we will see that in action when we get back into playing games."

Another positive from the extra week off for the Snakes has been Mirko Djeric now being a certain starter for Saturday against the Hawks having overcome the hamstring strain that kept him out of the last two games against the Breakers.

But overall Kelly expects every player on the team to benefit from the week in one way or another.

"Mirko has been great. You can get there where the physio says you are good and the doctor says you are OK but mentally it still takes a little while to play and feel great. He's at that spot now and he's ready to go," he said.

"It's good for everybody in certain ways. Some guys who haven’t played as much in games they are getting more minutes here on the training court so it's kind of like a new pre-season, and fitness test for them. 

"It's allowed all of us to drill those things that we haven’t drilled on court with full contact because of the back-to-back games."

Kelly is now willing to trust the judgement of the NBL and the respective state governments in Queensland and Victoria to declare the NBL Cup safe to proceed over the next month in Melbourne.

"I think the state governments have done a phenomenal job in keep people safe from COVID so I feel like with the go ahead that we are going into a pretty safe place," Kelly said.

"I come from the United States so it's all relative, but I think they've done a great job and if they say they think we'll be safe down there then I feel great about that.

"The league has been fantastic about being cautious but opportunistic in getting us to play games, and being ready to change on a dime and go play somewhere else."