The Albury-Wodonga Bandits will be out to erase a horror weekend on the offensive end with an improved display against Ballarat at the Lauren Jackson Sports Centre on Saturday night.
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Brad Chalmers’ side shot at less than 35 per cent from the field in its narrow loss to Nunawading and improved slightly against Bendigo in game two of the road trip.
But he knows it will have to be much better this weekend if the Bandits are to get back on track.
“That was probably the killer for us last week, I thought we played particularly well in both games, we just couldn’t shoot the ball at a high enough level that gets you a win on the road,” Chalmers said.
“We want to make sure we improve our ball movement, improve our player movement and give ourselves a chance to be shooting wide-open looks, and obviously make those to keep the scoreboard pressure on.
“I think it will give us a chance to keep progressing.
“Our defence has been really solid, but we had a tough weekend on the offensive end to create ourselves enough opportunities to particularly seal one game.
“From our end, we want to keep trying to integrate everyone and find a rhythm as a group.”
Chalmers feels the outfit is well placed and not far away from clicking.
“I think we’re better than most the lower-end teams, but we’ve got a bit of work to do to catch up to the top-end teams,” Chalmers said.
“I don’t think that’s somewhere where we can’t get to over the next couple of months.
“You’ve got to take the good with the bad and we were tracking nicely at 3-1, but you have one of those weekends where you don’t shoot it well against the two best teams at the minute.
“You’ve got to play well to beat those teams, but to be so close, particularly in the first game, was really positive.
“We’re not jumping up and down too much about it and I think it would be quite silly for anyone else to be thinking like that, it’s part of the process and winning on the road is tough.
“We’re back at home the next couple of weeks and we’ve really got to take advantage of the home court to keep pushing ahead.”
Shooting guard Daniel Sepokas is yet to play a minute as he recovers from surgery to re-inflate one his lungs, but is likely to return in two weeks, while Sawyer Dearborn is still at least a month away with a broken wrist.
But Chalmers believes the Bandits should match up well with the Miners.
“I think everyone has done a really good job in trying to cover for each other, so there’s no excuses on that end,” Chalrmers said.
“We’ll need a good, solid output from all our guys as a collective this weekend.
“Peter Hooley was at Melbourne United this year, he’s a quality Australian player and they’ve got a couple of decent imports.
“It’s a case of minimising the stars of their group and making sure the role players don’t have big nights either.”
Tip-off is at 8pm.