Lavery in confident mood

Cheshire Jets coach John Lavery was able to both reflect on his side’s achievement of reaching the playoffs and focus on the fact there are still two games remaining before the regular season is finished, which can still decide where his team are placed on the road to Birmingham in May.

Speaking after his team’s playoff clinching 80-68 victory at home to Glasgow Rocks, it was clear he was relieved that the berth had been sealed for Cheshire.

“It’s good and it’s pleasing, obviously with the performances that we put in recently, we’ve deserved to make the playoffs. We had no doubt at all that we’d make the playoffs but now we’ve got two games to go and it’s where we actually finish in the playoffs, we’re joint seventh, but we could finish sixth. We’ve just got to come out with the same positive mental attitude and get two more wins in the regular season.”

It was widely seen to be the best Jets performance at home this season, though some will say that Glasgow have nothing effectively to play for (securing their position of fifth in the league) and were on the back burners, it is difficult not to say that with a performance like that, any team could have suffered a loss.

He went on to say: “We shot the ball really well, Colin had an outstanding game on the outside shooting the ball, everyone shot the ball well, as we did Friday shooting the lights out at Milton Keynes. We’re coming good together, it’s still early days if you think Kai has only been here over a month, we’re still gelling together, but doing so very quickly on and off the court, which helps as well, so we doing a good job at the moment.

“It was just trying to find that last piece of the jigsaw. We started the season with Shawn [Myers], we brought Dan [Briglia] in and we’ve been missing chunks of the season without certain players. Now we’ve got everybody fully fit and the addition of Kai helps the team tremendously, especially with the balance of the team. It’s good and we’re all pleased with what we’re putting out on the court at the moment.

“I’ve said that since day one I know what these guys can do, that’s why I recruited them, so they are putting in good performances, nobody will probably want to play us come playoff time so we have to keep going on and plugging on.”

The current run of winning form could help them progress further up the table, and help avoid long trips to Newcastle or potentially Plymouth, but Lavery is happy that they have ticked the first item on his “to do” list since taking over as head coach: “At the end of the day, we’ve achieved our goal this year of making the playoffs. That was what we set out to do, we’ve done that, and we’ve done it with hard work. We’ve had different hurdles to get over, injuries, players that haven’t fitted in for where we’ve wanted, then getting the right players in and we’ve done that now, we’ve got to just keep on going and see what happens come playoff time.”

In terms of where his side finish, it seems Lavery is not really too concerned. He knows, as  do other coaches in the league, that his side are on fire at the moment. The added extra benefit to Lavery concerning the playoffs is that only MK Lions own their arena. They would be able to accommodate whenever a playoff needs to be played. The others technically do not own their courts, so need to work around other schedules.

As some sides can only play on particular nights, the idea of home court advantage in the second leg can sometimes make no difference at all. Lavery, therefore, is hoping that his side will benefit from this. However, he knows that a strong performance in the first leg is vital to his side’s success; anything more than a 10 point away defeat could spell disaster for the Jets against one of the top sides.