Taipans bitten by shooting woes

Cairns Taipans coach Adam Forde can't fault the effort that his players are putting in, they just need to stick with it and hope their luck turns to snap a nine-game losing run.

Forde had his team well prepared and with a definitive game plan that worked in almost every measure on Friday night against the Kings, falling just short of the Championship favourites.

Cairns took 21 extra field goals for the game than Sydney, but ended up making two fewer on the back of shooting at 28 per cent, along with 8/37 from behind the three-point line.

That ultimately proved the difference between the teams.

"The boys battled and I know they'll be disappointed, and our imports combined for 5/32, so I'm not using that as an excuse, but they will feel that," Forde said.

"As long as they come back to work next week and work on that, we'll continue to make the adjustments and the effort was there.

"We came in with a game plan with key areas of focus and for the most part we did really, really well.

"Availability comes into it again and we'll find out what the status is with (Sam) Waardenburg, but he was really good for us in the first quarter and then something happened where he was labouring a little bit.

"Then with Tanner (Groves) in foul trouble and Rob (Edwards) had a tough game. He had good looks in the first half, really good looks that didn’t drop, and then Sydney just turned up the physicality in the second half which frustrated him ... that broke a lot of what we were trying to do."

If you look at all the effort areas from Friday's game, the Taipans were well on top and by most measures they should have won the game.

By the end of the game, Cairns out-rebounded Sydney 55 to 41, had 23 offensive rebounds to 10, and ended up taking 21 extra field goals.

The numbers were even more stark at half-time with the Taipans having 17 extra rebounds than the Kings, 12 more offensive boards and having scored 13 second-chance points to zero.

But it wasn't to be, Taran Armstrong's missed dunk in the final seconds summing up a night of 'what could have been' for the home team.

"Especially with a big out so with KG (Kyrin Galloway) not available and Waardenburg also out for a good stretch there, we put the focus on it having to be a collective effort," Forde said.

"We can't just sit there and assume that the bigs will take care of it, the guards had to get in on it too and they beat us up with that last time.

"It's not just Sydney, we've had games we have lost where we've been really outnumbered on the rebounding, so it was good that we had that level of focus.

"But we just missed layups, we missed wide open looks and Sydney had three offensive rebounds off the foul line which is just a loss of focus in a very small window. They know what their assignment is and we'll just continue working to get better."