Bruton: 'No excuses' after loss to Breakers

Adelaide 36ers head coach CJ Bruton is frustrated after he saw his side start slow again in Thursday night’s 96-83 loss to New Zealand Breakers at Wolfbrook Arena in Christchurch.

The 36ers gave up 37 points in the opening 10 minutes against the Breakers and had to fightback from a 20-point deficit and had a chance to win the game during a frantic final quarter.

Bruton said the first quarter performance made his side play catch up, Adelaide reducing the lead to just eight points (80-72) with seven minutes to play and had the next five shots, but came up short.

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“It’s disappointing again, to let them shoot the ball and get off to a start like that, especially after the break that we had, we had a pretty good week, but it wasn’t our best showing,” Bruton said.

“It’s frustrating, it’s disappointing, we trained hard and we got after it, we had some pretty good sessions, we added Trey (Kell) back to our line-up, but no excuses.”

Bruton said his side knew what to expect from New Zealand, who were missing Will McDowell-White and Zylan Cheatham, but couldn’t stop the opening quarter avalanche.

“Coming out to play a team that’s desperate, you got to play with your heart and they did that tonight, so credit to them,” Bruton said.

“When you’re playing from that far behind, and even in the third quarter we were down 17, to be able to bring that back pretty quickly and to get withing striking distance in the last four minutes, I’ll take fault on some bad execution.

“Momentum was swinging our way (in the second half), but we didn’t take advantage of it, we didn’t value the ball, we didn’t get the job done.”

Adelaide is back on court on Saturday night when the 36ers travel to Hobart to play Tasmania JackJumpers at MyState Bank Arena from 7.30pm ACDT.