Wells not panicking after poor first-up Championship Series showing

Adelaide 36ers Head Coach Mike Wells says there is no panic in the camp after his side’s disappointing start to the NBL Championship series.

The Sixers started slow against the Kings and never really got going in the 112-68 loss at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena.

Wells’ side shot at just 35 per-cent from the field while the Kings had too many good looks and went at 66 per-cent, leading from start to finish in front of their home fans.

Wells said early foul trouble hurt his side, impacting its ability to get any momentum and he gave Sydney credit for their performance.

“I think they beat us in most of those categories and most of the statistics to kind of give you earmarks on how you're going to come out of the game,” he said.

“Give them credit. They're a really good team. You know, I thought they got us early, and then they got us often.

“They did a lot of really good things. They made things hard on us. And they broke a lot of the rhythm on both sides of the ball.

“They had a bunch of guys that made some plays and were just the more aggressive team.

“That's what happens when the foul trouble really kind of backed us out of any sort of rhythm because we just never got any.”

Back in the Championship Series for the first time in eight years, the Sixers seemed a little overawed by the occasion in the opening stages.

While Nick Rakocevic and Bryce Cotton found some scores early, the Sixers shot at just 43 per-cent as they trailed by eight points at the end of the first period.

The Kings scored the first nine points of the second period to make the margin 17 points within three minutes of the restart.

The visitors went small as bigs Isaac Humphries and Nick Rakocevic hit foul issues, and it seemed to slow the Kings’ scoring for a time, but with Tim Soares finding too much space at the perimeter and his side shooting at 67 per-cent from the field, the Kings were in front by as much as 22 points before settling for a 20-point half time lead.

The hosts were finding easier paths to the bucket and had 12 free throws to just four to Adelaide for the half, the Sixers were turning the ball over too frequently, while Cotton was being suffocated - double and even triple teamed - to limit his impact. The six-time MVP failed to score in the second period and appeared frustrated at the physicality against him that was being allowed by the officials.

Disappointingly, every time the Sixers showed fight, they missed vital shots and allowed the Kings to score too easily at the other end. By the end of the third period the Sixers had had ten more field goal attempts but trailed the Kings by 34 points.

With the deficit too steep to overcome, Wells benched his starters, already looking ahead to Friday night’s game two in Adelaide.

“It's only one game, so there's no panic in me,” Wells said.

“We’ve got to go back and we’ve got to regenerate our group and get a little more organised.

“We've played these guys pretty well through the regular season. We've had a couple of tough endings and a couple of losses.

“We’ve got to bank on some of the positive things that we've done. We've got to get back and find some of the rhythm that we had from the last series, and we got to carry some things over.

“We lost the game. (Now) we've got to go home and protect home court. That's what the playoffs are. It's a series. It's nothing else.”

The sides will meet again on Friday night at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.