In my opinion yes, Gleeson was made to look good by James Ennis in his championship with Perth.

Dennis is a smarter coach than Gleeson and he and Bevo made a great team and that partnership is showing what Shawn is doing with Townsville.

I like Shawn Dennis appears to have a good balance between X's and O's and firing guys. The only thing I don't like about him is he subs too much but that's more to do with his style of play I think. Great guy too. Gleeson did good Townsville and his first year in Perth but seems to have stalled I think

Meanwhile, Gleeson made playoffs every year while in Townsville with undermanned teams and has won a championship in Perth. Both good coaches. Christ, one win and Dennis becomes a great coach.

Dennis runs a decent offense and they manage to get generally excellent looks..their ocassional lack of offense comes from a lack of making the shot but they certainly don't struggle to get the look in the first place.

Perth run a terribly slow offense with limited ball movement and when the ball does move players hold onto it for too long. They catch and take too long to decide instead of just firing the ball on and moving.

Don't forget Perth were sabotaged by injuries last year, and were 2-0 before last night losing with Martin, Prather and then Jawai out.

I like Dennis as a coach,he does a lot of nice things, but I don't think he's quite put it all together, his Crocs teams look brilliant at times and break down badly at others.

Whether that's a talent issue, changing rosters each year or some chinks in what Dennis runs I'm not sure, but I think it reflects on his ability to drill his team somewhat. If he could iron them out he'd be doing a great job with the Crocs, who have beaten some far more talented teams over the past three years.

As someone who has watched both guys during their stints in Townsville, Gleeson is the better coach.

Despite his outwardly laidback appearance, Dennis grates on veterans and then they tune him out so he needs to have a young team. He has very questionable rotations and lineups, and has trouble getting his teams up for big games. I also don't like the way he allocates shots and plays: he seems to force the wrong guys into shouldering the offensive load most nights (eg. trying to run plays through Mickell Gladness or Clint Steindl ad infinitum). His teams have been consistently terrible on the defensive end and not great on offense either.

Gleeson on the other hand is solid in most areas, but not particularly great.

Paul Woolpert is better than both of them, but that's another story.

Leaguewide everyone goes on about how Shawn Dennis is a smart coach but as someone who has watched him very closely I really fail to see what they're talking about. Poor defense, poor offense, poor rotations, blown leads, veteran players hate him, guys' roles are poorly defined so they play inconsistently, schemes not suiting the abilities of the playing roster. And I'm sitting here and scratching my head trying to think about what parts of the game he coaches well.

I feel he is trading somewhat on his reputation as Rob Beveridge's lead assistant during Perth's dominant run.

I'm not saying he's terrible, but he isn't this "great coach getting the most out of an under-matched team" that everyone outside of North Queensland makes him out to be. People watch so little of the Townsville games that their capacity for analysis of their performance is somewhat limited.

Case in point: up until Blanchfield moved to Melbourne just this season, "Mitch Creek or Todd Blanchfield?" was a legitimate debate to have for lots of NBL fans.

Also... Dennis had something like six plus 40% 3 pt shooters on his roster last year (going in to the season...which is unprecedented / borderline insane and should have been unguardable most nights) and failed to leverage that into any kind of success on the offensive end.

Each one of those guys went on to turn in poor shooting seasons individually because Dennis never ran plays for shooters, so guys were always shooting off the dribble. That team could have been a nightmare and instead their entire game plan was "get it into Brian Conklin or Mickell Gladness and let them go one on one".

This year his team is really bad on paper so any success he has will be a great effort, and full credit should go to him...

...but I really hated what he did with that roster last year.

@anonymous: did you watch the playoffs last year? Cats were down to 5 players at one point so yes, I'd called that plagued!

Reminded me of how Clarke's 36ers could beat Perth with Radford's knowledge of the Wildcat's team tactics, but not necessarily beat anyone else.

Can't say I particularly rate either one.

What's the better type of patty to have in your burger - chick pea or lentil?

Ive heard rumbles over Gleeson for a few years, he has one of the most annoying faces in basketball. Always looks like he is squeezing out a fart, but for last nights game, not much he could've done. Perth were severely undermanned, and had that 17 point lead when things were running through Jawai. Once he went down, and the Crocs to their credit didn't give up, the game changed.

Hi guys !!!!
Do you think guys, that Perth could win on Hawks 'arena ?
News of Nate Jawai ?
Off for tommorow game ?

Matty Neilsen might suit up

I rate Gleeson a poor to average NBL coach, but that's mostly due to his time in Melbourne. If I remember correctly; some players got quite disgruntled playing for him.

I remember watching a preseason game that year and being decidedly unimpressed when he gave Lucas Walker a spray which was easy to hear (empty gym), very unconstructive and mean spirited. So I was kind of off the Gleeson train before it even left the station.

I wasn't impressed with 2014 because Ennis was easily the best individual in the comp, and they had easily the best roster. They did what I expected which was win the championship.

Perth were short two of their starting 5, then lost Jawai. That brought them back within reach of the Crocs.
Without Schensy, Dennis knew he couldn't match Perth inside, but knew we were vulnerable outside, so he ran his 3-point shooters and nailed our arse to the wall.
Blind Freddy could see that coming, although perhaps not how effective it would be, yet our perimeter defence still sucked.
Gleeson's default play of "just give it to Beal" has been wearing thin for a while, and killed us last night.

Whose call was it to start running down the clock, when the game was still up for grabs?

At the end of the night, when the game was on the line, Dennis got the ball to his guys who could score, we had the ball in the hands of Hire.

And WTF was up with that last play? We have all seen games where the last seconds take 5 minutes of foul shooting. All the Cats needed to do was take the easy 2 offered early, then foul on the inbound pass, and hope for a miss. Instead they kept kicking it back out looking for a triple.

The league was at a fairly low point compared to now. The Tigers and Wollongong teams, who finished 3rd and 4th and won 15 and 13 games would both be lucky to finish higher than 7th this season. Certainly neither would even be in finals consideration. And Gleeson had, at that point what was *easily* the best import combination in the competition, and a strong Aussie group who had mostly been playing together there for 4 years. Anything less than a championship would have been a disappointment.

Well if my memory is correct both Dillon and Tragardh (the captain) requested early terminations of multi year contracts, and the rumour was that they were refusing to play for Gleeson anymore.

Then Gleeson was sacked later, and Anstey took over...

Gleason is a terrible coach from what I have seen. His offense is stymied, inefficient and downright ugly.

The wildcats always require an insanely massive mismatch inside in their favour for their offense to have a focal point and a place to run thru.. Witness Jawai in 1st Qtr and vs 36ers.

As the wildcats scored 80% of their 1st qtr points from paint and fee throw line, the Crocs employed a defense based on keeping as many defenders as possible in the paint and slowly relied in the Cats who continued to pound it inside and shoot forced and tough (albeit close in) shots against multiple defenders. Low shooting %'s high turnovers followed.

The best and only Wildcats offense the past 2 seasons is scoring from their great defense and in transition.

Being a coach I know full well that Gleeson has ripped off the plays and an offensive system from a certain national team the Aussie boomers were playing recently.. The problem is that he has not yet figured out that X's and O's are not what makes this a brilliant play but it is the way the players play within the system.

Also Mr Gleeson the zone offense is designed for great 3pt shooters in wings and corners- Hire does not qualify, so don't play him in the 3pt shooters position when Crocs surround Knight and Jervis with 3 defenders.

Ripping off a euro system only works if you give your players the latitude to play with the freedom that the euro players do.
If you want to run euro plays, you need to think like a euro coach, pretty simple right?

Can someone tell him this because I am sick and tired of watching them score 50 points in 40 mins with nba talent on the floor when I can get juniors to score 100 points in that time very easily just playing two man game pick and roll.

Lol.. Please don't take my comments out of context. Surely you could consider Jawai and maybe at a stretch Prather an nba level talent. This would be the most talented wildcat team in recent memory.

Let's just say to play a certain style of game you require a certain style of player- namely playmakers and shooters and post player.The wildcats have to many guys who are neither. All they have is post players as far as scorers go. Kenny is good as a backup, at least he can hit a 3. Hire/ wagstaff and RedHage are the same type of player, we only need two of them and get another gun shooter. That would be a big help.

Will done coach gleeson out coached bevo

@fan- please learn to spell and punctuate at the very least if you're going to think you're a better coach than Gleeson. I can't stand fickle fans like you that coach from the sidelines. If you think you can do a better job, off you go to apply for the job. Hope your resume is as stellar as Gleesons.

Wow so many trolls here on this page. Friday night down 2 starters and had an off night and its world war 3. Look at todays performance, down 2 starters, Jawai fouled out, and winning against a star studded hawks team on their own court, 2 day break compared to 8 days.

I agree 98%. I disagree that Gleeson always has good players. He had undermanned teams in Townsville and made 5 straight playoffs. Clarify if I'm wrong but Townsville haven't made playoffs since he left.

Townsville made the playoffs in 2012, when Gleeson was coaching Melbourne.

Fair call, they made it with Woolpert, my bad.

My records have Mark Bragg at 33%, and so far Dennis is at 37%. If that's right I think the Crocs would have to go 4-18 the rest of the season for him to drop below Bragg.

To the anon above, love to know why you thought Woolpert isn't a good coach.

All I remember from his time in charge is his amazing variety of late game sets out of time-outs. In the final few possesions he was probably the best in the league. Not sure about the rest of the game however but from what I remember he didnt have much to work with.

Nope.

From 2-4 after five road games and the top team at home it would certainly be a turn up to go 4-18 from here. It's possible, but a long long way from "on track".

#239 if you don't like my opinion tune out.
I never said any of the crap you claim, try stick to facts before you make false accusations and revealing to the world your true IQ.
I just shared my opinion. Its not my fault if it is a far more informed opinion than yours.

If they lived up to their talent I had them in the 8-10 range. Nothing I've seen so far has changed that, while they've been very up and down they are highly competitive when clicking.

Are you changing tack because you didnt bother to check Bragg's career record? ;-)

I'm not a massive fan of Gleeson but one of the adjustments he made from Friday night was give the ball-handling duties to other guys not named Beal. Instead of seeing Beal trapped at half court and the offence suffering, Kenny, Hire and Redhage did what they needed to do to beat the press so when Beal got the ball in the front court, the team was often in a 4 on 3, or 3 on 2 situation. 25 points and 7 assists was the result.

They both laughed a bit, I would have said that either of them lossed it.

I never agree with the whole 'he inherited a championship team'. No, he didn't. Bevo didn't win the previous year then Gleeson gets hired and finds Ennis and Beal and wins a championship. Credit where credit is due. He's a great bloke and a family man with a helluva good resume.

He inherited the best core roster in the competition and was smart enough not to change e way they play and let the players drive the car as much as possible, pulling them up when they didnt meet the standards they set for themselves.

Gleason has never been a good Xs and Os coach, but there's a lot more to it than that and you can't call a guy who's never missed the playoffs a bad coach. His teams have almost always defended well with high intensity and that's a great start.

Dennis has some great Xs and Os and by the end of seasons seems to get his teams playing well, creating space offensively and disrupting defensively to slow opponents down (which works much better for them than when they disrupt trying to create turnovers).

His teams don't produce consistently which begs the question about how well drilled they are, as does the number of brain explosion moments they have, but you can't say he has done a bad job to have got 10 and 11 wins out of budget Crocs teams.

Gleeson missed the playoffs with Melbourne in 2012.

Indeed, I obviously excused him that one because he was McPeaked!