McCarron pumped for pre-season

Adelaide 36ers captain Mitch McCarron recently led the Boomers to 2022 FIBA Asia Cup glory.

McCarron, who joined Rowey’s Sports Show on Tuesday, spoke on his time in Jakarta. 

“It was an awesome time. A great group of guys, great staff and everyone involved had a really good time", McCarron said.

“It was a fairly new group; some guys hadn’t played together before so that was a challenge in itself - getting everyone on the same page but everyone bought in really quickly and played great throughout the entire tournament”.

The Boomers’  tournament celebration attracted social media attention. 

“I was just having a bit of fun with the boys", McCarron said.

"I felt like a bit of an old bloke at times I mean I’m 30, but we had a young group. I think the average age was 24 which is considerably younger than the group we had in Lebanon five years ago, but yeah, we were just having a bit of fun”.

The league released the NBL23 schedule on Monday, and McCarron is particularly excited for a Christmas Eve clash against South East Melbourne Phoenix.

“Pretty stoked about that. I think it’ll be a fun time so hopefully the city of Adelaide gets around it and everyone comes out to watch", McCarron said.

"It’s awesome for us as players, we can’t complain and get so spend Christmas Day at home and celebrate. Hopefully we get a win the night before”.

It has been a busy off-season for the 36ers, and head coach CJ Bruton is finalising his roster.

"We still have two roster spots to fill. We talk about the five man and we do also have that third import up our sleeve which looks like it will be a guard by the looks of the roster right now", McCarron said.

"It’s an exciting group, we’re going to be able to play fast and I think CJ’s going to be pretty excited with what he can do with it and what we can do both offensively and defensively, so I’m pumped just to head into pre-season to be honest.

McCarron would love to see fellow Boomer Thon Maker, who was named in the tournament's All-Star Five with McCarron, make the move to Adelaide.

“I mean that would be great," he said. “I had a word to him, not that that means anything, I just said I’ve got some boys in basketball if you want to play in Adelaide”, McCarron said.

“Hopefully we can bring him in because he had an incredible tournament, and you can see he’s just so valuable."

McCarron said the 36ers' NBL23 campaign starts next week, with pre-season testing for players available. 

“I just know when I need to be in Adelaide next week for pre-season and then we’ll get things figured out," he said.

Click here for the full NBL23 schedule.

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