Appreciating suffering to help JackJumpers grow

After rechristening the Silverdome the Goldendome after Friday night's win, Scott Roth feels the suffering they are fighting through right now will only hold the Tasmania JackJumpers in good stead while Dakota Mathias is one player continuing to thrive.

Once again the JackJumpers were well short of having a full team available on Friday night against the New Zealand Breakers in Launceston with Bryce Hamilton, Majok Deng, David Johnson and Ben Gold all still unavailable.

Not only that, Taran Armstrong played through illness, Nick Marshall battled through a sore ankle and Ben Ayre suited up for the first time in NBL27, but is still yet to hit the floor this season.

Despite that, the JackJumpers held on to beat the Breakers 79-77 for their third win over six seasons now in Launceston and at the time it returned them to top spot in the NBL at 8-3 only to have since been replaced again by the Sydney Kings with both on the same record.

That was the lone game of Round 8 for the JackJumpers and it came at a good time with everything they have dealt with over the opening eight weeks from a personnel and health perspective.

But their character and culture have shone through to have won eight of the 11 matches despite never being close to full strength, and Roth feels what they've shown they can overcome will only hold them in good stead moving forward.

"We have some guys that will definitely need quite a bit of rest and Benny was available, and our plan was to try to give him three or four or five minutes, and it didn't happen tonight," Roth said.

"But he'll get another swing in the next couple days to get some more practice under him and he's going to be hugely important to us moving forward, and we want to gradually make sure he comes back in the right fitness level for him.

"So that's exciting and then the group in general needs definitely some rest. We're obviously running on fumes here and I told these guys during the course of these four games that we're not here to survive by any means.

"We're here to thrive in this environment, and in sports, I think you have to appreciate suffering and that's not always a great thing to go through.

"But I think suffering is part of sports and if you're able to suffer and get to the other side of that, man, the rewards down the road are significant and different teams go through it, and suffering is kind of what we've been doing here a little bit.

"Hopefully, as we gradually increase our guys coming back over the next few weeks, they'll see what's down the road for them as we move forward."

Coming into Friday night's game in the Silverdome, the JackJumpers had just lost in the same building the previous Friday night against the Sydney Kings, where they had been in a winning position before giving up 12 of the last 14 points of the game.

That meant the JackJumpers had won just two of 11 games in Launceston so it was becoming quite the hoodoo, but the Jewels got a win in the Silverdome last Saturday and then Roth's team was able to get the job done against New Zealand and he was happy to put those struggles behind them.

"I thought up until maybe the last two or three minutes, they were doing a really nice job of just staying with what we were doing and getting that margin of lead, and then we made some bonehead decisions in the last minute or two," Roth said.

"That obviously made it quite difficult to get this one across the line and credit to Gordie (Herbert) and his group for continuing to fight, but we also just renamed this building the Goldendome because we're not coming in second anymore, so the Silverdome is a myth.

"But seriously, Taran Armstrong, we didn't know if he's playing in this game because he has the flu and Marshall plays the whole game with a severely sprained ankle, or at least a sprained ankle enough to where he said I got to come out in the last four minutes.

"So we just had a lot of guys again step up and thrown into difficult situations, and they responded in the right way. And then Kody was obviously huge for us in those areas of manning the fort and helping us tick over the scoreboard.

"It was a grinder and we'll take anything we get, especially in this building, and hopefully we've exorcised some of the demons in here, and we can move forward.

"But again, to have just seven guys and it's just another gritty kind of effort with these guys and the fight and the love in that locker room is real."

Roth could comfortably go down the list of players he is loving what they are producing so far this season with the JackJumpers whether it's his front court of Josh Bannan and Will Magnay, Marshall stepping up, Armstrong running the team, or Kody Stattmann and Nick Stoddart playing crucial roles off the bench.

But Dakota Mathias is one player he continues to be enormously impressed with not only with him living up to his shooting reputation, but for the toughness he continues to show and what an iron man he is proving to be.

He had another 18 points, five rebounds and two assists in 37 minutes while nailing another 4/10 from beyond the arc with Roth putting him in some elite company among players like him he's seen over his journey.

"He's incredible and I haven't seen too many players outside of the NBA who move like he moves without the basketball," Roth said.

"I was lucky enough to have Clint Steindl for four years and he's another guy that's an elite cutter and mover and spacer but Dakota's at another level.

"He's got a big motor and he's constantly moving, and he's very difficult to guard and he puts a lot of pressure on even if he's not shooting the ball.

"For him again to go, I think last game 38 minutes and now 37 minutes, he's just putting a lot of pressure on defences because if he gets away from them, he's obviously quite deadly, and he fits in perfectly what we do, especially when we're a little bit healthier.

"He's been fantastic and he's just a worker like everyone else we have here, and is just no nonsense and loves to play."