That one stings. Wangaratta Warriors had a golden opportunity to record their first win of the season when they hosted Wodonga Wolves on Sunday, blowing a seven-point half-time lead to go down by 10, 65-75. While it was a round four fixture, it was just the Warriors’ second game of the year, owing to the absurdity of the CBL calendar. The Warriors looked positive early, outscoring the more experienced and established Wolves in the first two quarters, leading 39-32 at the main break. From there, the Wolves worked into their systems, and the dangerous Mateo Hanley (31pts) started to exert himself on the match. Wangaratta’s defensive structure was made to work hard, and when they did gain possession, they failed to capitalise in the paint and from outside the arc. The seven-point half-time lead evaporated, trailing 52-57 at three quarter time, and the Wolves were able to put the game to bed late. Coach Adam Maher said they needed to work on playing smart basketball on offence and defence. “We started off a little individually, couldn’t quite get the team coagulation going as we wanted, but we certainly had a plan, our plan was to go out there and play really great defence. “We know Wodonga had been scoring some big scores, which to me indicated there wasn’t a lot of defence being played, so that was part of our game plan, go out and play some hard defence on these guys. “We had a talk at half-time, we knew they were going to come out after half-time with a bit of fire in their belly and push it back with a little more intensity on the floor, which they did, and I guess we went backwards into a bit of flight mode, not understanding as a team yet how to play that pressure. “While it’s a disappointing result, from a coaching position, I’m confident in where we’ve come from the first week to the second week, we’ve done a lot of work on defence, tidied up a lot.” Harrison Pople top scored for the Warriors with 12 points, while Cooper Newton finished with 10, but there was plenty to improve in the offensive side of things. “We’ve got to do some work on our stats,” Maher said. “We’re shooting field goals at 32 per cent, our three-pointers were three from 23 – the three is not the problem for me, but after 23, we probably should’ve recognised that we’re not going to be a three-point shooting side today. “With our two-pointers, we were 20 from 61, so we had lots of scoring opportunities, lots of shots which didn’t fall. “We missed a lot of easy layups, we didn’t shoot a lot of mid-range stuff, and I like to play in the mid-range area.” The Warriors will continue their campaign against Myrtleford on Sunday.
