36ers "only looking forward" after horror weekend

The Adelaide 36ers have been left reeling by a horror 35-point defeat at the hands of Tasmania on Saturday, but Sunday Dech says all the club can do now is look forward and control what it can control.

Adelaide registered its tied-lowest total of the 40-minute era with its score of just 59 against Tasmania, two days after falling to New Zealand by 13 points.

The pair of defeats has dropped the side to ninth, and means the 36ers have now endured four defeats from their last five games.

“As an athlete you don’t want to play too many of those in your career, where it looks like it gets away from you and you can’t get anything right. It’s gone, it’s happened, I’ve had that before in the past and I don’t want to have it again in the future,” Dech said.

“Hindsight is a great thing and you can look back and think ‘I would have done this differently, I would have done that differently, or we could have done this differently’, but at the end of the day the season is too quick to dwell on what’s gone and if you linger too long you lose three or four in a row and we don’t want that to happen.

“We want to focus our attention on Cairns and try to move forward in the best way we can, and that’s coming to training and trying to fix the things we can and control the things we can.”

Head coach CJ Bruton and guard DJ Vasiljevic took aim at Adelaide’s travel commitments over Round 9 as to why the side put forward such a poor display against the JackJumpers – and those comments were recently slated by NBL analyst Damon Lowery.

RELATED: Lowery launches scathing Adelaide attack

The NBL released a statement saying the 36ers had the option of taking a later flight to Hobart from Christchurch, and that “clubs receive the schedule with adequate time to make logistical decisions”.

While Dech admitted the tough road trip likely did play a part in his side’s struggles, he distanced himself from admitting it was the cause of the loss.

“The travel is the travel. Sometimes throughout the years there are teams who have tough travel schedules, and it was our turn this time around,” Dech said.

“It’s a factor but you don’t want to hang your hat on that and say that’s the reason why we lost our games this weekend. At the end of the day you can’t control that.

“For us as players we’ve got to follow that schedule and do our best with what we’ve got. We fell short, and I don’t want to blame the travel because there were a lot of different contributing factors.”

Dech added the external narrative that has been created around the 36ers’ recent displays hasn’t found its way into the locker room.

“If you want to play for a long time in professional sport you have to learn how to tune it out, and you have to focus on the opinions and the voices of the people that matter,” he continued.

“For us it’s the guys in the locker room, it’s our family members, and it’s the people that care about us.

“The outside noise will come. Everyone’s a great coach when they’re on the couch and everyone’s a great athlete when they’re not in the limelight so for us, we just focus on what we can control and that’s out of our control.”