Perth's Player Meeting Jumpstarted Adelaide Win: Wagstaff

Perth captain Jesse Wagstaff has credited a players’ only meeting as the catalyst for his side snapping their four-game losing streak on Saturday.

The Wildcats entered their Round 6 clash with Adelaide on a run of four straight games - the first time since 2005 they had hit such a rocky patch of form.

Led by a 25-point performance by import forward Brady Manek, Perth felt their way to a five-point victory to help maintain touch with those sides currently occupying the higher reaches of the playoff positions.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The <a href="https://twitter.com/PerthWildcats?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PerthWildcats</a> are clawing back ?‍? ?<br><br>The Foot Locker Player of the Game was Brady Manek ? <a href="https://t.co/BAfmALsYQV">pic.twitter.com/BAfmALsYQV</a></p>&mdash; The NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1588848420470820864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 5, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

“We thought we’d meet and talk about where we were at,” Wagstaff told The West Australian. If anyone had any frustrations or suggestions, they could talk. We’ve got a really experienced team with a good mix of youth and everyone’s voice is respected.

“It went really well. It was really good to sit down and chat because things hadn’t been going too well.

“We came out and played positively. We played the right way so even if we’d gone down I daresay we would have been more content that we’d taken a step in the right direction.”

A troubling theme of Perth's season so far has been Bryce Cotton playing something of a lone hand on offence, but Manek, Corey Webster and TaShawn Thomas all put together some of their best performances of the season against the 36ers.

Manek took out Foot Locker Player of the Game honours off the back of his 25 points on 80 per cent shooting while Webster added 18 points of his own.

Thomas finished just one rebound shy of a double-double. He added 12 points.

Full story >> Perth Wildcats captain Jesse Wagstaff opens up on player meeting that ended NBL losing streak.