Mooney Believes Tigers can Take the Heat
The Everton Tigers travel to the Guildford Heat for their
first ever BBL Championship Playoff game on Sunday, and coach
Henry Mooney is looking forward to the challenge facing his
team, who are debuting at Britain's top level this season,
"We're really looking forward to it, we've been working
hard on it all week, and we've got a game-plan that we believe
will work, it's certainly not beyond us to win there,"
he said.
Mooney's team travelled to The Spectrum, where this game
will be contested, a fortnight ago and went down to a heavy
106-82 defeat, but the Everton coach is planning to reverse
that result this time around,
"We didn't play well when we went to Guildford a couple
of weeks ago, but we'll be better prepared this time. We left
at 7.30am on the Sunday morning, but this time were going
down on Saturday night, and that should work better for us."
Tigers won the other two meetings between the teams this
season - both of which were played at Everton's home venue
at Greenbank Academy. Amazingly, the Tigers were one of only
two sides to beat the Heat twice in the league this season,
the SAMG Verve Scottish Rocks being the other. They beat the
Heat 91-80 in October to record their first victory in the
BBL, and repeated the trick with a 95-90 success in February.
Mooney believes his side is ready to repeat those wins,
"The guys know what they have to do. It's one and done,
if we lose the season is over.
"We match up with them pretty well. Tony Dorsey is still
the man to stop, and we need to find a way to do that. Mike
Martin's tough inside as well, but they have a lot of perimeter
fire-power as well. James Jones, Dan Gilbert, Dean Williams
and Dan Wardrope can all hit the three, and Williams can certainly
prove deadly if he's left open to spot up.
"EJ [Harrison] has also been playing well, I think he's
averaging around 18-20 in the last four games.
"Paul James is a great coach and decent person, and
I think it's going to be a great game. They're a good team,
but if we play to our potential we can beat anyone."
Mooney is pleased with his side's first BBL campaign overall
to date,
"We've done okay to reach the play-offs, and we've certainly
been better than the other two new teams. We should have won
a couple more games, but I'm pleased with the season over
all. I think the play-offs are going to be very interesting.
Any of the lower ranked teams could win away from home. "
|
