Cooks Hoping To Cut Wildcats Down To Size

Illawarra Mercury

Wednesday October 1, 2008

By MICHAEL COX

HAWKS coach Eric Cooks says dealing with the Wildcats size will be the key to winning in Perth tonight.

For Wollongong to play their favoured transition game, they will need to hold their own in the battle for rebounds.

But the Wildcats strength is their sizeable front-court, and even without the injured Paul Rogers, the West Australians have a host of aggressive big men.

"They've got three or four good big guys who could cause us a lot of trouble," Cooks said.

"We need to limit their second shots - they're a really good rebounding team and we're a relatively small team. That's going to be a key for us - we must keep them off the backboards, we must box-out and limit them to one shot."

Cooks said although the match-ups in the front-court were key, controlling the boards against a team such as Perth required a team effort.

"We've got to do a better job," he said. "Everyone has got to take responsibility for rebounding. A couple of our guards have been grabbing five or six rebounds ... and that's what we need."

Olympian Glenn Saville agreed that the rebound count would go a long way towards deciding the contest.

He said it was Perth's sheer size that made them such a tough match-up.

"They've always been a big team," Saville said. "Shawn Redhage is just relentless on the offensive boards and you've got Ben Knight, who is a pretty big body, who is in there as well, so they're a big team. We haven't done very well keeping teams to a low offensive rebounding game so the boards is where the game can be won and lost for us."

© 2008 Illawarra Mercury

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