Play-In Game sums up Sixers season

It might well have been the most eventful season any NBL team has gone through in some time and Adelaide 36ers coach Mike Wells felt Sunday's Play-In Game loss summed it all up as he already begins looking forward.

Kendric Davis, DJ Vasiljevic and Montrezl Harrell are capable match winners, Sunday Dech and Lat Mayen lock down defenders and shooting threats, and with Isaac Humphries inside, the craftiness of Jason Cadee, and Jarell Martin's cameos, there's good reason Wells liked his eight top men.

However, the 36ers just couldn’t find consistency all season long. A lot of that was with that eight-man rotation Wells settled on not being together for more than 10 games, but there were also some wild inconsistencies even with them out there.

All of that was on show in Sunday's Play-In Game where the 36ers looked right on track to score a first win of NBL25 at John Cain Arena with a 21-point lead early in the third quarter.

They then produced some of their worst basketball in the second half, putting up just 30 points to see their season end with all the cracks of a volatile playing group shining out.

"Unfortunately I think it was a mini version of our whole year to be honest with you," Wells said.

"I don’t know if we could play a much better first half and I think that was what we were looking for, and what the group has been capable of from the very beginning.

"Then unfortunately it was a five-assist, 30-point second half with a defence that wasn’t anywhere that it was the first half. It's a hard one for me to digest right now.

"I still want to give our group a tonne of credit for the journey we've been on the whole year with the ups and downs to winning our first play-in game on the road and playing as good a first half here as we could probably play."

Wells had full faith in that eight-man rotation he ended up settling on with the 36ers. By half-time against the Phoenix he looked like a genius and they had one foot into a Playoff series with the Illawarra Hawks – who they swept in the regular season.

However, with such a volatile group there's always good that comes with the bad, and the bad was as bad as it got in the second half with the 36ers scoring 30 points on 9/30 shooting from the field, 1/13 from deep and with 11 turnovers.

What Wells saw was players turn inwards too much in that second half as the pressure mounted.

"Unfortunately the second half will haunt me for the next six months probably. Pressure is a funny thing and it turns us inwards," Wells said.

"These guys are used to handling a lot of things through their whole basketball careers, but at times when you get to this level and everyone's out there pressuring, you have to be able to go outward to get the ball to the second side.

"That's what we did in the first half but that second half is what we've seen at times is a side of us that meant we couldn’t get our feet back under us.

"You've got to get organised, the ball's got to get to your stars and you have to get them the ball in their sweet spot. We did that in the first half and we weren’t able to do that the second half."

While the 36ers team of NBL25 did have a distinctive style with the explosiveness of Davis as point guard, the size and power inside of Humphries and Harrell, and then the shooting threat of Vasiljevic, Wells doesn’t necessarily think that's his style.

He is happy to adapt how he wants any team to play to the players he has at his disposal and with him looking set to return in NBL26, how the Sixers play will depend on the players they have.

"However this team looks next year, there were some really good things on the defence and we played a style that fit our personnel," Wells said.

"We'll just have to see what the personnel looks like next year and as a coach you're going to change your system depending on that. We'll have a few of these guys back but Matt Weston buys the groceries and I'm supposed to cook it.

"We'll figure out what that group looks like for next year and try to put them in the best position to be successful, and I'll coach that group after I learned a lot of different things this season that I wish we could have done from the start."