BEVO’S PLAYBOOK: Perth trip a question of mental application

How can we go from starting like a lead balloon in New Zealand to produce a 46-point turnaround on our home court two days later? 

If you ask what we did physically the answer is very little. The battle for us – and it’s ongoing – was a mental one.

I always tell my players that there’s three components to the game of basketball. There’s your skill development which is essential and something all teams do. There’s your conditioning and every team goes out and gets the best strength and conditioning coach in the world. The third component is mental application. It’s probably not looked at enough in teams but it’s the difference between the good and the great ones

Some teams have sports psychologists. We had one when I was in Perth, Jodii Maguire, and I believe she was one of the major reasons our players were so mentally tough. She’s now working with Cairns and it’s no coincidence that they are one of the mentally tougher teams in this league with the ability to execute and to focus.

What is mental toughness? It’s a question I ask our players all the time. To me it’s the ability to focus on the task at hand under consistent pressure and under adversity.

So far this season we’ve responded reasonably well as a group to adversity. Against Adelaide on the road we were down by 16 points and fought back to win. In the first game against New Zealand we were down by 25 and fought our way back into it but in both games – in particular our starts – our mental focus was nowhere near where it needed to be.

I challenged our guys in the change rooms after the game in New Zealand about their passion and their love for the game. When we got back home I had individual meetings with every player and asked: are you happy with where we’re at or do you want this team to be great? 

I wanted to see a response. That’s why I went with Kevin White in the starting line-up with Mitch Norton on Sunday. I believe that was the turning point for us. We had two of our hardest-nosed players in there and getting right after it and that took some pressure off other guys in the team.

It really set the tone and I think that’s a good formula for us because when we play like we did on Sunday we’ll beat any team in the league.

The challenge for us now is to produce it on the road. It's all good at home because we’ve got the home crowd behind us to get us going but when we go to Perth we’re taking on 12 and half thousand people and we need to ask ourselves: how mentally tough are we willing to be tonight?