Roth beams with pride despite winning run ending

One loss in nine games is hardly reason to panic for the defending champion Tasmania JackJumpers but coach Scott Roth has quickly turned his attention to preparing to hit back against the Illawarra Hawks.

The JackJumpers lost their first game since November 7 on Sunday when the South East Melbourne Phoenix snapped their eight-game winning run with the 105-91 victory.

There had been some areas of concern for Roth even with his team winning including foul discipline and on Sunday the Phoenix took 33 free-throws to six from his team. Rebounding had been another concern and the JackJumpers were out-rebounded by seven and the Phoenix had 11 offensive rebounds for nine second chance points.

Turnovers were an also an issue with the JackJumpers having 16 of them with the Phoenix scoring 24 of those, but none of that takes away from the fact that the defending champions have done a standout job reviving their season.

After starting 3-8, they went on the biggest winning streak of any team this season to win eight straight including the last three of those without Will Magnay. Roth doesn’t want it to be glossed over.

"As I told our guys, I'm super proud of them and a big congratulations to them on that little streak that they went on," Roth said.

"I know a lot of people like to brush it off and say stuff about that streak and we didn’t play anyone or whatever their thing is, but ultimately kudos to those guys.

"They left us dead and gone six weeks ago, and for them to have the wherewithal and resilience to keep working and doing what we do is a credit to them.

"We'll go back to doing that again, we'll double down on the stuff that we do well and see how the rest of the season goes and we'll fight to the very end to see what transpires. We don't like losing, but good things have to come to an end and we'll just start over again."

Over the course of their eight-game winning streak the JackJumpers had only been conceding 81.8 points across that stretch, and are the best defensively rated team in NBL25.

Giving up 105 points to the Phoenix means their defence wasn’t quite where it had been and there were several areas that stood out but nothing more so than Tasmania only taking six free-throws for the game while South East Melbourne got to the line 33 times.

"Obviously it's an area that we pride ourselves on with that side of the floor and up until this game we were the No. 1 defensive team in the league, and that was with X amount of games without Magnay out there too," Roth said.

"We're proud of the group and what they've done over that span to correct a lot of things that we were dealing with, which was great. Obviously they shoot 33 foul shots and we shoot six, that's really the game right there."

The JackJumpers now jump on a plane on Monday to prepare to play the league-leading Hawks in Wollongong on Tuesday night having lost by 33 points on their last visit there back on October 12.

That's not as much of a concern to Roth in comparison to his focus on just getting his team back to doing all the things well that they were doing for that eight-game winning run before it came to an end on Sunday.

"It doesn’t really matter who you're playing at this point, they're all going to be games that are going to be pivotal in some fashion or form," Roth said.

"I think for us as we've done in the past we won't overreact to too much. I don’t know what's going to transpire, we could lose nine in-a-row or we could win nine in-a-row or five or three in-a-row, it doesn’t really matter to us other than the fact that we go back to work and double down on stuff we do.

"We'll stay consistent across the board and we have a few more home games which will be good and road games that will be tough, and nothing will be given to you. That's the way it should be."