If Heal can trick Woolpert into going small and benching Nevill while making Hinder the leading minute getter on the team (as he has been all too eager to do in recent weeks) it will be all she wrote.

Also Madgen has torched Townsville all season also because Townsville has no wing defenders.

This is the worst Townsville team in the history of their 20 years in the league in terms of the "intangibles" of effort, attitude, pride and leadership; so you just need to come out even vageuly aggressive at home against them and you can wrap it up in the first half and have time for a gentle warm down in the 4th while.

Can we just let NZ go straight into the GF and have Perth play Wollongong for the other spot?

None of the other teams are really deserving of the title of "NBL playoff participant"...

Crawford can't defend? I thought he was known for it?

Crawford was once one of the top lockdown wings in the league, but he hasn't really been a force on that end for a couple of seasons now. Last season it wasn't as noticeable because he was a). a step quicker and b). was having a great year offensively.

He's working doubly hard on offense this season because the scouting reports have uncovered that he struggles when handling the ball, so he's seeing more doubles early in possessions. And it's working, so he's exerting more energy on offense for a smaller return; coughing up the ball up more often, and generally just moping around all game long unless his shot is falling in catch-and-shoot situations.

He just doesn't have enough left in the tank to stop a guy like Madgen on the other end after you take all that into consideration.

For my money, your best bet is to stick Blanchfield on Madgen and hope his length troubles him. But you will probably see Cedar or Ervin on him because Woolpert completely lost his mind about 6 weeks ago.

"If Heal can trick Woolpert into going small and benching Nevill while making Hinder the leading minute getter on the team (as he has been all too eager to do in recent weeks) it will be all she wrote."

This. Woolpert has been far too quick to go away from his strengths when things arent going well.

Exactly Paul.

Last year he was the opposite: sticking to the right plan when he knew there was an advantage and letting any outliers revert to the mean over time.

Eg: last year if Schenscher missed his first four shots against an undersized opponent, didn't mean mean he went away from Schenscher or benched him for an entire quarter.

Stick with it and the balls will fall your way when you have an advantage.

What makes his stubborn refusal to play Nevill against undersized opponents who like to run P&Rs is that Nevill is our best defender, in P&R situations or at the rim. The numbers say it and so does the eye test. It doesn't make any sense.

I used to love him but wouldn't mind if we went in a different direction next season.

Mick, how do you rate Ervin as someone following the Crocs closley this year?

Do you rate him as a on court leader?

Im a huge fan, seen him play live a couple of times, torched the 36ers atleast once this year, but i guess as he has never been a 36er not paid huge amounts of attention to those other intangibles.

Ervin is a fantastic player and I can't say enough about his on-court effort and guts, but probably not cerebral enough to be considered a great leader.

Ervin's style of leadership is more of the "give me the ball and I will play as hard as I can and get us the W" than anything more in depth. It's like a Jordan / Kobe style of leadership but without the cognitive aspect.

Which is fine if you have the more tempered strain of stewardship elsewhere on the squad, but the Crocs don't, really.

You have a guy in PC who berrates his teammates for stuffups yet is the most turnover prone guy on the squad. Whinging and hanging his head all game. Great player but not a leader.

You have a guy in Jacob Holmes who sounds like a basketball professor in a post-game presser yet does some of the dumbest things I've ever seen a veteran ball player do on the offensive end, which consistantly boggles my mind.

Captain Hinder just gets hyped up and calls it leadership. Yet somehow I have never seen an NBL team in recent memory that is so passive and with so many effort-related problems on the court, so go figure. The hyping and motivation isn't working.

The rest of the squad is either too young or too passive to be of any value as a leader.

The Crocs are missing someone in the mould of John Rillie rather badly, but I just don't see it being solved in the offseason, there are too many problem players that will be reprising their prominant roles next season.

To shorten what you said, Mick, Ervin is a very talented player but not what the Crocs need given the rest of their roster.

Haha yes Paul.

I have a tendency to waffle when talking about the Crocs (understatement).

They have so many problems it is rather difficult to be concise.

"U reckon Ervin be a good fit for the 36ers next season?"

Only if Ervin wants to destroy his career.

What's up with heal and lazare?

Best possible finish for the Townsville franchise, long-term.

If they had made the finals you would have seen the whole squad re-signed as some reward for showing "heart", "courage" and "conviction" when their "backs were against the wall".

Bring on the offseason. Time to make the hard decisions, Pat. Be ruthless.

In final end Aaron Bruce a little bit tooo good.