Rillie's pride in 'Cats fight

John Rillie knows whatever decisions he made would be questioned if Perth didn't win the NBL Playoff Series, but the reality was going small and shortening his rotation is why his team pushed Melbourne United to the brink.

Game 1 in Melbourne didn’t go to plan when Chris Goulding hit nine second half threes to take it away from the Wildcats. Then they found themselves 20 points down in the third quarter of Game 2 on Saturday at RAC Arena.

That's when Rillie made the adjustments that worked by going small, and shortening his rotation, as his team outscored United 43-18 to go from 18 down to winning by seven.

The 'Cats again kept on fighting all the way in Game 3 on Tuesday night with Kristian Doolittle delivering 37 points, 10 rebounds and five assists, Bryce Cotton 33 points and six assists, and Jesse Wagstaff hitting a three with 2.9 seconds left that looked like it was going to force overtime.

Rillie couldn’t have been prouder of his team following the second straight tough Playoff series loss to swallow for the Wildcats after losing in Game 3 at home last year to the Tasmania JackJumpers.

"You saw our team throughout the season just fight and find ways to win, and give ourselves a chance to win," Rillie said.

"That was a tremendous character trait of our team and you saw that when they got up five with like a minute to go, and we pursued that one possession with offensive rebounds and Wags hits a big three to tie it up.

"That last minute, you can't ask for anything more to give yourselves a chance like that. It was a great series but disappointing that we're the losers of it and you digest it, and move on."

The way the Wildcats turned around Game 2 in Perth on Saturday midway through the third quarter was Rillie going small and backing in Dylan Windler and Doolittle to hold down the fort up front, alongside Ben Henshall, Cotton and Tai Webster.

In Game 3, Cotton played all 40 minutes and Windler all but 31 seconds, while Doolittle played nearly 34 minutes, Wagstaff nearly 21 and Henshall more than 28, doing his best to again chase around Goulding.

For the second straight game, Keanu Pinder barely played in the second half, Izan Almansa only played two minutes and Hyrum Harris, David Okwera and Elijah Pepper didn’t get on the court at all.

Depth is a great thing to have all season but with your season on the line, Rillie has to do what he thinks gives his team a best chance to win even if his bench is outscored 51-5.

"You see playoff basketball wherever it is in the world and the rotations shorten. Doolittle was pretty good, Pinder was good and we decided to go with Wagstaff," Rillie said.

"There's only 40 minutes with five guys on the floor, so it's hard. That's the thing that gets lost in all of this too.

"I can only speak from my team, but those guys put in the extra work and their readiness of them every day for any opportunity that comes their way gets overlooked in professional sports.

"How they have to deal with that, those guys have been tremendous this year."

While Rillie can't fault the efforts of his Wildcats players who got so close to reaching a Championship Series for the second straight year, and there were plenty of positives, that doesn't diminish the pain of losing.

"At the end of the day we're here to win and we didn’t do that," Rillie said.

"Then you look at everything and what we all could do a little bit better to achieve that. You saw that in display in the fourth quarter of Game 2 and nothing's going to trump the final result.

"We were very close to sitting here talking about being in a Championship Series and if you look in my time, I think we're progressing nicely through that. You're always evaluating those situations, though, to move forward."