Rockingham Flames coach looking to turn up heat on Perth Redbacks

Rockingham Flames men’s coach Ryan Petrik has his sights firmly set on Friday night’s trip to Belmont despite his team facing its first double header of the 2019 State Basketball League season.

The Flames take on the winless Perth Redbacks at Belmont Oasis before heading home to host the 3-1 Goldfields Giants on Sunday, and Petrik said while having a scout report on both teams the main focus of training this week was preparing for tomorrow night’s opponent.

“We have an idea of what we want to do against (Goldfields) but a really good idea of what we want to do against the Redbacks,” he said.

“We put in work during the week for both... Goldfields might run a certain action we spend some time on in training without actually labelling it for them, whereas we actually put in the Redbacks’ playbook during the week.

“Post-game Friday we’ll send our guys the video scout and paper scout (for the Giants) and give them 48 hours to digest it, show them the film and then go out. That’s the plan but all we’re focusing on in the short-term is getting the game over with on Friday night.”

The Flames will welcome Jarryd Griffin and Luke Roberts back into the fold from injury, while youngster Callum Beard, who has missed the start of the season with a torn hamstring, will undergo a scan before being declared fit to return.

“Callum got through training last night and was fantastic, but he’s going for a scan today to confirm if he can play... given how well he trained I’d expect him to be okay,” Petrik said.

Greg Hire will only be available for Friday night’s game after stuffing the stat sheet on his return to the Flames with a triple-double in the 30-point win over Cockburn, a performance Petrik labelled “stupid good”.

While Petrik said Hire gave his side a different dynamic, he was confident the team’s offence would get the job done without the four-time NBL champion against the Giants on Sunday.

“Everyone knows how good Greg is. Everyone knows he can score and he’s an elite rebounder, and his passing is off the charts for a guy his size,” Petrik said in the wake of Hire’s 18-11-10 performance last Saturday.

“But our offence is generally motion-based - we don’t have a lot of control from a coach’s point of view - the guys go out and play with the concepts and systems we put in. We script all the work and all the prep is done during the week, like ‘this is how we want to guard this action’, ‘this is how we want to guard this guy’, ‘this is what we’ll live with’, ‘this is what we can’t live with’.

“We do a mountain of work during the week and the boys will try to execute it on the weekend.”

The Flames women will be looking to make it three wins from three against a young Redbacks outfit who, like their male counterparts, are without a win in 2019.

Coach Craig Reynolds said despite their poor start to the season he wasn’t taking the Redbacks for granted and was preparing for the potential return of Australian Opal and Perth Lynx guard Lauren Mansfield.

“(Mansfield) makes that team a whole lot better,” he said.

“At the moment they’re really young. They’ve got some really good youngsters, including Suzi-Rose Deegan, who we’re going to have to get a good scout on to win the game, and being at Perth will make it harder. But I’m confident if we can play like we did on Saturday (against Cockburn) we’ll get the result.”

The women tip off at 6.30pm with the men’s game at 8.30pm. Sunday’s clash with the Giants at Mike Barnett Sports Complex tips off at noon.