Wells shows praise to defensive effort

Adelaide 36ers head coach Mike Wells was thrilled with the way his team responded on the defensive end during the final quarter of Thursday night’s 95-88 win against Sydney Kings at Qudos Bank Arena.

The 36ers, who led by as much as 15 points in the second quarter, found themselves trailing 71-69 with a quarter to play.

But Adelaide switched on at the defensive end, limiting the Kings to just 17 points in the final stanza to advance to Sunday’s showdown against South East Melbourne Phoenix at John Cain Arena.

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“The way we played down the stretch, tons of credit to the defense,” Wells said.

“In the fourth quarter when it was winning time, I thought we made some really big plays on the defensive end.”

Thursday night’s victory was Adelaide’s first playoff win in 2517 days and Wells was thrilled with the resilience of his group.

“Is this organizations first playoff win in a while and I didn’t think anyone expected it to be easy,” Wells said.

“Our path has been a difficult one, how that game played out was like a mini version of our whole year.

“It’s not exactly how we wanted it to look in the third quarter.

“You’re going to take some punches and this group stayed together.

“They came out swinging but the resilience of our group to get our feet back under ourselves and to dig in on the defensive end and the rebounding, and there were some timely baskets from this guy (Vasiljevic).”

Adelaide were down six points after giving up a double-digit lead in the third quarter before two huge three-pointers from Vasiljevic cut the Kings’ lead to just two with a quarter to play.

“But I want to shout out DJ’s defense, sure he made some huge threes for us but his steals, his ability to shift and show a crowd, those type plays are winning basketball,” Wells said.

Although Kings star guard Jaylen Adams scored a game-high 30 points, Adelaide defensive duo Lat Mayen and Sunday Dech forced the NBL22 MVP into nine turnovers.

“What Lat and Sunday do is there are glue pieces. They are two unbelievable people, number one, I love being around both of them,” Wells said.

“They take the other teams best offensive player night in, night out and we have the ability to tag team a little bit and we also play them together at times.

“They give us some flexibility now that our team is healthy.”