Translation: "I'm out of here"

Email to members from Bevo all but says "seeya later"

Alot hinges on Boomers job still but I would think he is China bound.

Wildcats with $$$ to bring in world class coach should work out alright.

Tab Baldwin

Aside from a China offer, is this a case of 'start the bidding process'? Sounds like the Cats are not keen to be drawn out too far on that without a back-up plan.

@alekrad

Yeah, a *lot* of past-tenses in that email, wasn't there?

I'm pretty sure Bevo would stay with the club if the right offer was made. If he goes, it will be the WIldcats loss and another club/countries gain. Bevo has always been a standout coach, loyal to his club and players and someone to whom players gravitate.

I believe that the quality of coaches in this country is sensational and I'd love to have Beveridge return but if not Joey Styles would bring a fast paced style and he got the Blaze playing tough defense late in their last season.

Dream coach would be Stan Van Gundy... If we can understand what he says!

Does anyone believe Rhys Carter would return to Perth next year, he quickly became my favorite player!

Go wildcats

The wildcats only had Lisch playing more than 30 minutes a game so it certainly wasn't a case of anybody on the roster getting huge minutes, but I think that could play a part in who suits up for the Wildcats next season

Boti's take on Bevo: http://www.botinagy.com/blog/devo-re-bevo-its-wild-out-west/

Re Lisch only player to avg over 30min/game, I do wonder if Bevo shoots himself in the foot a little with the over-rotation. Particularly when it leads to us having to watch Bartlett spray three point shots all over the shop. Seems to not be exploiting the starting five to the fullest of their ability. I mean, when we apparently have all these ten point players and we're giving the bench almost the same amount of minutes, it doesn't make much sense.

I say that every game, when it was 48min games the players like grace fisher ect played 40+min a game. Now earn more and play less, if it was like an nba season il understand but playing a game a week surely playing 35 min aint gona hurt. A bench player should come in minute 2 just for a player to have break not contribute like a starter

But playing shorter periods allows for a higher intensity and things like full-court presses and the like. The trend seemed to start with Goorjian in Sydney.

I really have to question if Bevo's focus of organising everything around the D went past the point of diminishing returns. In the end, it seemed that what we sacrificed on the offensive end was not being compensated enough by the gains on the defensive end.

When we came up against a team like Breakers who have exceptional D but don't sacrifice their scoring ability for it, our fragile offense just came apart entirely. (28% shooting = we should be shot)

I don't think it would take a genius to work out that Beveridge would has his top three options listed like this;

1) Boomers job
2) Return to Perth
3) Everything else

He has publicly stated that he covets the Boomers job, and if he was selected I believe BA would have no hesitation extending the job into a full-time position incorporating the centre of excellence role given Rob's outstanding record of player development. If he doesn't land this job, then I believe given his young family, he would want to stay put in Perth. Aside his personal family situation, no other NBL club can offer the facilities (both training and playing) and resources that Perth can.

I think he has a big Chinese offer on the table but isn't too keen on it. Uproot the kids and give them a crazy experience! (My parents pulled me and my siblings out of high school for a term to travel China for a few months and I've always appreciated that.)

How much credit for Perth's low shooting percentage should go to Lemanis and team for thoroughly disrupting them? I haven't rewatched the games including off-ball pressure on Lisch, but I presume they went out of their way to deny Lisch opportunities and force guys like Carter and Bartlett to punish them from range?

The Breakers guards are capable of keeping sagging D honest - Corletto, Bruton and Webster are formidable. Even Jackson hit a few when they challenged him to. Besides Lisch, Perth had Carter (streaky), Bartlett (stone cold for the series), Robbins (didn't look like he wanted to shoot at all) and then from there you're into the forwards.

^^^

Column A, Column B...

As I said in my post, the Breakers have fantastic D. I wouldn't say it is better D than the Wildcats, but it is fantastic. But they can still maintain a strong offense in all games, which we simply can't.

I can't believe that the difference simply came down to the absence of one player (D Martin), so I have to look over the comparison between the two styles, and we seem to just sacrifice too much for our defense. So we could hold them to a low(ish) score, but had no hope of catching up to even that score.

Offensive consistency is desperately needed for the Cats next year.

Isaac - the Perth shooting issues were not about the grand final series. They were poor all season. Look at the Townsville games. Look at most of their games for the regular season.

For the season, they had 4 players (in their main rotation) who shot 40% or better for the season. NZ had 8! For NZ, 2 players actually shot better than 50% for the season but none of the Perth players did. In fact, only Knight got above 45% for Perth. In saying this, I've focused on players with 10 games or more for the season. By the way, Perth's best shooter was Trueman (64.5%) who, ironically, is a Kiwi!

So to focus on the GF series is misleading. If Perth don't fix their shooting, they will be relying on other teams not adjusting (or again incurring season ending injuries to half of their starting line-ups) to maintain their amazing run of playoff appearances.

Have to agree with Vert re Bevo's top three options:
The Boomers job should be the pinicle for anyone interested in furthering Australian basketball and not just chasing $;
Having lead the Wildcats to three grand finals - one win and two runner ups in four years, if his style of play is "dull" then maybe the other clubs might like to start copying it. Bevo has been very successful with and for the Wildcats. Good luck finding a suitable replacement;
As for perusing other options, I can't say I would do anything different given BA is full of BS and the Wildcats have jerked him around for a few years. The Kings might do well to make him an offer, invariably where Bevo goes quality players follow....

Actually Peter John, Perth shot at about the league average when you took Perth Arena out of the equation, where shooting was about 5% below other venues around the league.

Their shooting on the road was very similar to last season and statistically they were probably the league's best offensive team on the road.

Perth's shooting issue is they are inconsistent, red hot one game and ice cold the next.

Nathan of Perth, you cant believe the offensive difference came from a team losing its starting PG a week before the grand final? Really? That's a pretty massive hurdle to overcome.

I thought this forum was about the wildcats coaching position not a dissection of their past few games?

Oh yeah, well just looking from a distance if they cant keep Beveridge I think Joey Wright would be a good pick. The players there already have discipline and a commitment to defence that Wright's system will be able to feed off.

Why dont we stop recycling the same coaches all the time.
Lots of good young knowledgeable coaches around.
Matt Shanahan has done some good things at Knox.

I think the Wildcats would have been a totally different team had we had an Andrew Parkinson type that can spread the defence and knock down the 3 on a consistent basis.

If we are to lose our core of Lisch, knight, Tovey and Hire then maybe we should try luring Cam Gliddon home and he could both knock down threes consistently and keep Bartlett on the bench.

Are there any other players that you'd like the team to acquire if Styles or Shawn Dennis become our coach next year?

Maybe in another 2 years for gliddon as that is what he has left on his contract with us.

Thanks Steve and Gliddon definitely deserved a contract extention/long contract as he has so much ability and teams in this league don't seem to be very aggressive signing long term contracts with this stupid bloody points system.

Who would you like to see in the middle next season Steve, for your Taipans?

paul,

He's still only one player and although important and effective to the offense, was not the lynchpin. I don't believe that if it had been Cedric Jackson going down with an achilles instead of Damo that we would have taken the Championship in two instead of the Breakers, after all.

The offensive malaise has been evident all season for the Wildcats.

We have a Hawthorn-esque smell of a wasted era about us at the moment. Freaking irritating.

Imagine the tension.

Lunch with Bevo at Coco's. Reminds me of my past corporate life. Still feels guilty with all the staff back in the office.

— Nick Marvin (@NickMarvin) April 22, 2013

Good restaurant. Suppose if you can expense account it to Bendat, why not...

Wildcats will announce their new coach on June 20th. Wonder if this delay will hamstring their roster signing efforts?

Not quite. Wildcats will announce their coach in early June, with over 20 applicants so far.

Haha, read the tweet wrong. More recent tweet about it:

Over 20 candidates for the Wildcats coaching job, with interviews to be conducted in the US from next week. It appears change is afoot..

Their email to members says they are announcing some player signings in the next few days.