The Redbacks, in their first game after the Christmas break, were rusty despite two weeks of training.

​“I was hoping to have a better performance than what we did,” coach Marcus Jenkins said. 

“Our transition from offence to defence was extremely poor.

“We weren’t going backwards. We were going alright running downhill to go to offence, but running back uphill to play defence wasn’t our forte at all last night. 

“It was a bit disappointing due to the fact that we have been playing some pretty good defence before the Christmas break. Hopefully we kick into gear when we play Portland this afternoon.” 

Jenkins said a long break had hurt the team.

“I think the Christmas break really hurt us,” he said. 

“I was hoping that it would freshen us up and we would come back a bit better than what we have.” 

Jenkins said there were some highlights from the challenges. 

“I think everyone had their moments,” he said. 

“DJ (Woods) and Zac (Dunmore) stepped up and did what they had to do, it was hard as we were lackluster.

“In the last quarter I pulled the starters (DJ, Zac,Joshua Fiegert and Jayden Wright) out in the last six minutes of the game to freshen them up for today.” 

The good news for Jenkins is that there were no real injury concerns from Saturday night’s match against the Lakers – just general soreness. 

Jenkins said the match against Portland today was a must-win. 

“Hopefully we come away with (the win) and then we can push forward to next week against Hamilton and see where we sit in the play-off rank,” he said. 

The Portland Coasters have won five games and have lost seven games and are currently sitting on sixth place in the Country Basketball League, South West men competition. 

The Redbacks have added Jason Cameron to the squad for today’s match against Portland, in an otherwise unchanged line-up.