Injury-hit Wildcats' emotional focus

A late injury scare to MVP favourite Bryce Cotton topped a horror night for the Perth Wildcats as the Illawarra Hawks NBL fairytale continued with coach John Rillie shouldering a lot of the burden.

Rillie had nothing to do with injuries suffered to key pair Kristian Doolittle and Bryce Cotton as the Hawks overran them at WIN Entertainment Centre to start the last round of the NBL season on Thursday.

However, it was a 'Cats team increasingly lacking focus and control of their emotions as the game wore on and Rillie does take responsibility for that.

Emotions almost spilled over on Thursday night especially when there was no call made on a backcourt screen set on Doolittle.

The Perth forward ran backwards into Froling, with the Hawks centre standing his ground perfectly legally, but the end result was a shoulder injury that could have a huge impact on the Wildcats finals prospects.

There was also a no call on half-time that saw Perth young gun Ben Henshall fall heavily after having his dunk blocked by Illawarra's Davo Hickey. Again though, it looked perfectly clean from Hickey.

Coupled with the Hawks winning the rebound count 57 to 35, and taking 35 free-throws to 26, and Rillie's frustrations spilled over.

It was a near total disaster for a Perth team who are guaranteed of finishing second even with the loss and no matter what happens in Tasmania on Saturday when Cotton hurt a knee in the fourth quarter too.

Cotton is a lock to win his fourth MVP award, but the good news was at worst it was a knock to the knee that has him doubtful for Saturday against the JackJumpers.

"He'll (Doolittle) just get some X-rays here and then we'll see where it goes from here," Rillie said.

"It was knee to knee contact (for Cotton) and it's just one of those deals with how does he pull up after playing tonight."

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Kristian Doolittle has left the game after this screen set from Sam Froling.<br><br>Watch live on ESPN via Kayo ? <a href="https://t.co/misyNZlE9V">pic.twitter.com/misyNZlE9V</a></p>&mdash; NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1758064450689733117?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 15, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

In the bigger picture, keeping their emotions in check will become a key focus for the Wildcats come finals time.

"Tonight I got too emotionally invested in the game when it was a really good game," Rillie said.

"For us we have to go out and play a good style of basketball, respect ourselves with the way we approach and usually good things happen that way."

There are far fewer problems with the Hawks. They are now 12-6 since Justin Tatum replaced Jacob Jackomas as coach to be guaranteed of playing Finals.

Tatum isn’t content, though, and is focused on beating regular season champion Melbourne United on Sunday to lock in a top four finish.

"We know that we've solidified ourselves a playoff spot, but our goal is to finish off with a winning season (currently 14-13)," he said.

"We want to win that game against Melbourne because we want to finish with a winning season record so that's our finishing goal for the regular season."