The Castec Rural Pioneers will travel to Keilor tomorrow to take on the Keilor Thunder for a second time this season.
After back to back losses the Pioneers have fallen to third on the ladder in the NBL1 South Conference with a record of 9-4.
Although the Pioneers are in a bit of a dry patch after losing two games in a row, history has shown this season the Pioneers have found a lot of success on the road as they are currently undefeated away.
Keilor on the other hand are sixth on the ladder with a record of 9-5.
The Thunder have been a high scoring team so far this season averaging 90.36 points a game while also having some big scorers on their roster.
Kyle Zunic has been a big player for the Thunder this season averaging 20.46 PPG and 5.38 APG and looms as a key player for the Pioneers to stop.
Nick Marshall will once again have to be ready to play in this game.
Marshall has been playing really well over the past few weeks scoring 30 points three times in the past five games
. A struggling area for Mount Gambier in recent weeks has been their three point shooting.
Last game against Geelong the Pioneers struggled from deep, hitting seven threes while shooting 23%.
The Pioneers cannot rely on winning games by simply scoring in the paint and getting to the line as well as relying on Marshall to score the bulk of their points.
The team has struggled with bench contributions during stages of the season with only three players scoring double digits last game.
Head Coach Richard Hill is confident that his side will get the job done on Friday night but he still thinks there is still an unknown when heading into the game with how competitive the conference has been this season.
“I feel good about our chances because we are on the road and we should have a tough mindset,” Hill said.
Hill believes a big factor in this game will be three point shooting and again thinks the team that shoots better will be victorious.
“We do need to guard the three point line against these guys and we are going to have to do something to stop their seven footer who’s a pretty good player,” Hill said.
“They have got a pretty good line up but they have not been playing well, they have not been scoring a bunch of points and they have had some low scoring games over the last few for them, but if we put points on the board and shoot well then we should win.
” After losing two games in a row Hill said he and his coaching staff had discussions around changing things up in the team.
“We thought about it a lot even though we were winning early on but we were not playing that well and we spoke on changing things up then and we decided not to and we went on a five game winnings streak and we played really well,” he said.
“We have been thinking about maybe doing it again but I really do not want to change things too much, we cannot change our system because we have got eight games coming up in 30 days so if we get it wrong then it could fall into a massive big heap, so it’s unlikely that we will do very much different.”
