PERRY Lakes Hawks coach CJ Jackson felt his team was overawed by being in the semi finals in Saturday night's Game 1 against the Joondalup Wolves but he is looking forward to seeing what they can produce now back at home this Friday.

The Lady Hawks have continued to develop and improve in Jackson's tenure as coach and that has been shown clearly in 2016 as they finished the regular season in fourth position before beating the Mandurah Magic in three games in the quarter finals.

But taking on the minor premier Lady Wolfpack in the semi finals was always going to a step further up and the Hawks were simply blown away early on in Saturday's Game 1 at Joondalup Basketball Stadium.

The Wolves raced out to lead 15-1 and 21-5 early on to end up leading 51-14 at half-time with the game over. There were at least some more positive signs for Perry Lakes, though, as the Hawks stopped the bleeding in the second half and actually cut the final margin to 30 points.

Week 1 Women's SBL Semi Final Saturday night wrap 

The Lady Hawks now get to host Game 2 this Friday night at Bendat Basketball Centre and a victory will see them earn another crack at the Wolves at Joondalup Basketball Stadium on Saturday night with a place in next Friday's Grand Final on the line.

Jackson is now confident that after having a first half in Game 1 that could have hardly gone any worse, the Hawks will now know what it takes to compete against the best teams with a Grand Final berth on the line.

While the Hawks have experience in Deanna Smith and Antonia Edmondson, for the majority of the rest of the group it was a first semi-final experience and Jackson is looking forward to seeing how they now bounce back at home on Friday night.

"I think the cobwebs are out now and if you go back to the Wizard of Oz, there's no place like home and I think we play some of our best basketball at home. Us being at home and being in front of our crowd gives us a chance to get ourselves back into the series," Jackson said.

"We just have to take a deep breath and then go from there. We're playing on adrenaline and our adrenaline wasn’t channelled in the right way. Now going back home if we address it and form the adrenaline in the right way we'll give ourselves a better chance.

"We played well enough all season to be in the top four and we deserved to be there, but in order to be in the top one you have to do something a little bit extra. We did not do anything extra to say that we can really give it a crack, but we still can."

Jackson did at least see some positives to take out of Saturday night in the second half, particularly early in the third quarter but he knows that if Perry Lakes is going to force a deciding Game 3 that it will take a strong performance at both ends of the floor for all 40 minutes.

"The start of the second half was when we were pretty much at our best but against a very good team you can't accept three minutes of good and 37 minutes of mediocre basketball. We are playing against current and former WNBL players so the magnitude is a little bit higher," he said.

"Even out of the first series when we played in the quarter finals, some of the girls commented the intensity level was a lot higher. Well it goes up another notch in the semi finals so we need to make sure that we respond to the moment and get back on track."

The Hawks' cause this weekend will be helped somewhat with the Wolves being without imposing centre Ellyce Ironmonger, but Jackson doesn’t want his players thinking that means things will automatically go better.

Especially considering the Lady Wolfpack consists of the likes of Klara Wischer, Nikita-Lee Martin, Shani Amos and Amy Kidner, Jackson is fully aware they have enough talent remaining to make the Hawks pay if they aren’t at their best and put them under tremendous pressure.

"In order to beat the champion you want to beat the best. It doesn’t matter to us that she is out or not. She covered a lot of ground in that game but she wasn’t the one that really hurt us," he said.

"I thought Amos played a great game, Wischer played pretty good and some of their other girls were good. They had a pretty balanced attack but when you let them do what they want to do, then everybody's going to look good.

"When you push them and push them hard, then everybody shouldn’t have a good game. One or two might have a good game, but the rest should cancel that out."

While the Wolves did put the Hawks under great pressure on Saturday night forcing them into 26 turnovers of which 10 were by point guard Lauren Jeffers, Perry Lakes wasn’t able to do the same.

As a result, Amos was able to have a standout performance for the Wolves but Jackson knows if they can ramp up the pressure on Friday that not only can her points total be limited, but her turnover count could rise and that could be prove crucial in the Hawks forcing a Game 3 or not.

"We didn’t have a chance to put Shani under any pressure because of the fact we were down right from the beginning. The rest of the girls were catching the ball wherever they want to, were driving to wherever they wanted to and cutting to wherever they wanted to," Jackson said.

"We didn’t do anything to take them out of that. I thought that if we were to do those things and do what we've done well then we'll give ourselves a chance.

"I go back to Game 2 of Mandurah and there were some parallels to that game and this Game 1 against Joondalup when we didn’t play well at all, but I think now the butterflies are out of us and we're not star struck anymore, and are ready to go."

Article by Chris Pike
Photo by Serene-Elise Photography