The Maitland Mustangs men have returned to winning form in time for a double-header against the Bankstown Bruins on Saturday night and Albury-Wodonga Bandits on Sunday.
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The Mustangs ended a five-game losing streak with a 71-64 win against fifth-placed Sutherland Sharks last Saturday, lifting them to ninth on the table with a record of three wins and five losses.
Maitland finally found the cohesion they had been looking for with James Hunter (16 points and 14 rebounds) and Sharif Watson (13 and 11) both putting up double-doubles in a full-team effort.
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"Overall it was a great team effort," Mustangs coach Luke Boyle said. "Will Cranston did an absolute amazing job defensively on their point guard Lochlan Hutchison who was in the Sydney Kings squad last year.
"Will did a great job on him up the court generating turnovers, slowing the offence down which resulted in a lower point scoring game as we were making it difficult for them to get into offence.
"Sharif (Watson) and Jimmy (Hunter) both put up double-doubles in that game. Both defended really well, they had two really experienced big guys one of whom played in the Kings squad last year as well."
Boyle said the Mustangs had a plan to start team leaders Terrell Turner and Jack Edwards off the bench to give the team more direction and energy during the middle stages of the game.
"Terrell controlled the game really well down the track and kind of steadied the ship for us when we most needed scores," he said.
"Jack gave us that energy boost off the bench."
Boyle said they had addressed defence and player roles and the best make-up of fives on the court at any time to arrest the losing streak.
"Defensively we just weren't as sharp as we should have been through those five games," he said
"We've spent a fair bit of time around that and obviously it paid off keeping a strong offensive team to 64 points.
"We were disappointed that we lost a few of the games because we gave up some fairly big leads. Against Inner West we gave up a 20 point lead to lose.
"But when we kind of looked back at the games we have lost, we've lost to first, second and third. We were disappointed we had lost to them, but once we looked at the stats of who we were losing to it wasn't a bad scenario.
"And then you come against that Illawarra one for instance, they had a guy for one game who played against us and then flew out for the NBA G League trials."
Boyle said the Bruins and Bandits would offer contrasting styles on the weekend.
"You've got one team in Bankstown who are not putting up a whole lot of points, but you will get a lot energy out of them because they are a sort of young development team," he said.
"And then you've got Albury, which has always been a bit of a powerhouse in the old SEABL (South East Australian Basketball League) which was the NBL 1 South.
"This is their first year in our league. They are a team that shoots a lot of threes and plays an up-tempo game. They have a lot of experience with division one college players and paid players as well. It will be a good contest."
Both games are at the Maitland Federation Centre. Tip off in the men's NBL 1 East game against the Bankstown Bruins on Saturday is at 7pm and at 3pm on Sunday against the Albury-Wondonga Bandits
