Wells: 'We must defend'

Defence is going to be the focus for Adelaide 36ers coach Mike Wells, as he prepares for his first home game in charge on Thursday night and desperately trying to avoid a 0-3 start to NBL25.

The way the Sixers have found ways to score in spurts in both their first two games of the season at HoopsFest against the Sydney Kings and then on the road to the Cairns Taipans has shown that they are going to put up enough points to win games.

That was again the case on Saturday night against the Snakes, where DJ Vasiljevic had 12 points in the first quarter on the way to 24 for the game, while Montrezl Harrell had 10 in a couple of minutes to start the second and had 20 for the game in less than 22 minutes.

As a team, they put 97 on the board and that was after scoring 94 last Sunday in Perth against the Kings. Wells still sees the offensive end as a work in progress, but knows scoring won't matter, unless they start defending better.

The Sixers gave up 102 points to the Kings, who made 16 three-pointers and then they conceded 101 points to the Taipans, who shot 53 per cent from the floor and went 15/29 from three-point range.

"Offensively we did function and we shot the ball at a high clip, and we scored enough points to win the game but our problem was defence," Wells said.

"We took care of the rebounding, we took care of the turnovers, we took care of assists, we took care of a lot of different things but they made a bunch of shots at a high clip.

"I can take the offensive side of the ball and we did some things where we functioned at a pretty good pace, but defensively the effort, the energy and the attention to detail has got to be at a different level."

Wells has never experienced an NBL game in Adelaide before and his first time will be in charge against the Phoenix on Thursday night.

There's sure to be a sold-out crowd in attendance and he can't wait for the occasion.

"I've heard all about the great support that we have in Adelaide and they come out and are going to be loud, and there for us," Wells said.

"We'll feed off that energy and I think this is another step in this development of our team. It's a challenge and we've got a really good team coming in and we've got to take care of our home court, and establish ourselves and figure out how we can play 40 minutes.

"We've played some really good stretches of basketball, but unfortunately also some tough stretches and us being able to consistently hang our hat on the defensive end is what will get us through.

"We've got to figure out how to defend and get guys to take a little tougher looks to help our offence click at a different by being able to run back at them."