News

Bandits to look to the future

12 Mar, 2010 08:02 AM

THE Albury-Wodonga Bandits begin a new season tomorrow night and, for their often tortured and patient fans, hopefully a new era of competitiveness.

With a much talked about three-year development plan in place, a fresh Bandits leadership team is optimistic the new decade will bring a turnaround in the Border club’s previous bleak fortunes.

Then again, Bandits fans could be forgiven for thinking they’ve heard it before. As recently as last season in fact.

And the season before that. And the one before that. And so on, and so on.

After a one-win season in 2008, the Bandits won three of their first 10 matches last year to at least have a veneer of competitiveness, if not respectability.

However, the promising opening quickly soured as injuries and lack of depth exposed the Bandits and condemned them to yet another last-placed finish — the club’s fifth wooden spoon since the 2001 championship season.

Another mass exodus of players following the end of the season forced the organisation to finally admit short-term fixes to the team’s shortcomings were simply not going to ensure the on-court viability.

Coach James Madigan, captain Matt de Koeyer, explosive import Fernandez Lockett, silky-smooth swingman Jermaine Williams, defensive stopper Mick Watson and talented guards Matt Gange and James Quinn are all gone.

In years past such a conga line of exits would have surely sounded the death-knell for the Border outfit.

However an off-season recruiting drive has netted two replacement imports in Travis Gabbidon and Ryan Bright as well as former skipper Nick Payne and his Knox Raiders team-mate Daniel Briglia.

Throw in former Melbourne Tigers development player JP Wilkinson and the Bandits now believe they have the frontcourt firepower to prevent opposition teams from wreaking havoc on the offensive boards — a decided weakness in previous years.

In addition, the club has been steadfast in its resolve to find out which local players are capable of handling the level of play in Australia’s premier second-tier basketball league this year and beyond.

New coach Ian Gallaway said he was predominantly concerned with ensuring the local players at his disposal were given sufficient opportunities to prove themselves, something he noted that had been talked about in seasons past but never actually committed to.

“As we’ve said from the outset, this is a development squad,” Gallaway said.

“Of course we’ve got some internal game numbers that would be great to achieve.

“I guess from a personal perspective, eight wins would be great.

“But that number can be offset in either way. If we get five wins but develop three guys, well, you can probably say that’s not so bad.

“If we get 10 or 12 wins and don’t develop any guys, then maybe the 12 wins aren’t worth the paper it’s written on.

“It’s more about how many guys at the end of this season understand what they’ll need to do for next season and have the ability to improve for next season, that’s how we’ll gauge the success of this season. We all want to win games and that sort of stuff, but that’s our ultimate goal for this season.”

Gallaway stressed that while he expected this year’s squad to surpass last year’s total of wins, he was more focused on the long-term view than worrying greatly over the number of wins the Bandits earned.

“Absolutely we’d be disappointed (not to match last season’s win total), I think that’s any coach’s or team’s expectation, to beat what the previous year’s team did,” Gallaway said.

“I honestly think we should be able to do that, there’s at least four or five games that we should be able to get hold of and win, but I’m also saying that we could probably win eight games.

“The season will ultimately come down to how many players at the end of the season we have bred a new culture into, who understand what this league is all about and who are prepared to do what’s needed in the next off-season to keep improving.”

Gallaway, who was an assistant to former Bandits coach Matt Morgan in 2002, has implemented a game-plan that will cater to the offensive abilities of his two imports, as well as Payne’s and Briglia’s extensive talents, while at the same time retaining a structure for his bench players to fall back on.

“We have to play a certain style, we only have a few scoring options on our team,” Gallaway said.

“We don’t want to be in a position where we can’t isolate our main players so that they can go to work on their own.

“So that will be the main scoring option we have, we’ve got some sets in there to keep some offensive fluency and spacing but we’re going to be relying on probably four players to score 80 per cent of our points, so we need to make sure they’ve got some space on the floor to operate.”

Despite the better-than-expected recruiting haul in the off-season, the Bandits’ depth remains frighteningly thin but Gallaway maintained his reserves will be getting consistent minutes throughout the season, regardless of wins, losses or game situations.

“We’re committed to our program of getting some minutes through our bench guys,” Gallaway said.

“We’ll be working our butts off to make sure that happens, because if we don’t, then the success at the end of the year won’t be there.

“We could run just six or seven guys every game and probably win as many as 12 games that way but then what’s that going to do for us next year?

“We were hoping to give everyone a minimum average of 10 minutes a game. Now, that might average out, one player might only play eight minutes one game and if he’s having a good game the next time out, he might play 12 minutes.

“That’s what we’re hoping to do, so the guys who aren’t going to play every week, they’re probably going to play in about half the games and hopefully they’ll get about 10 minutes per game.

“At the end of the season then, all our development players will have had around 140-150 minutes of game time, which would be a great outcome.

“We’ve got to find out what these guys can do and at the end of the year we’ll determine which players should or shouldn’t be in it and go from there.”

As far as the imports go, Gallaway admitted both Gabbidon and Bright would be the focal points of his offence, but said expectations should be tempered given their relative youth.

“It’s about them developing as well,” Gallaway said.

“They’re only 24 years old, they’re not mature basketballers as yet, they’ve got a long way to go.

“We’ve had some conversations about them playing their own game a bit and they’ve taken a step back but it’s time to step up.

“We can talk about numbers in terms of points and rebounds but it’s also about them being role models and mentors and to help turn this culture around.

“They’re going to have to be our leaders and they’ll need to score the majority of our points which is all we can really say to them.”

The Bandits play host to the brightest of Australia’s young basketball talent tomorrow night when the Australian Institute of Sport comes to town and Gallaway believes the game is a chance for the Border club to grab an opening-round win for the first time since 2007, albeit as long as the Bandits came to play from the opening tip.

“It’s a winnable game, it is every year, but it’s also a very loseable game,” Gallaway said.

“The AIS players have been training hard for a while now, for five out of the past six months they’ve been working on their game three times a day, five days a week.

“So they’ll turn up here ready to go and if we take them too easily, yeah, it will be game over straight away because we know they’ll play up-tempo, hard defence, tough basketball.

“So if we’re not ready to go it will be a disappointing loss whereas it could be a real confidence-boosting win if we turn up and play our best basketball.”

Tip-off at the Albury Sports Stadium tomorrow night is at 7.30pm.

Ian Gallaway (Coach)

Ryan Bright (US)

Travis Gabbidon (US)

Nick Payne (Knox)

Daniel Briglia (Knox)

JP Wilkinson (Melbourne Tigers)

Chris Maclaine (Returning)

Aron Pantano (Latrobe Valley)

Todd Dalton (Wangaratta Warriors)

Chris Merrilees (Wodonga Wolves)

Scott Hare (First year)