JackJumpers try to solve Silverdome quandary

Tasmania JackJumpers coach Scott Roth thought it was Groundhog Day on Saturday in Launceston and he hopes a different travel schedule might solve the quandary in The Silverdome this Thursday.

The JackJumpers arrived in Launceston on Saturday to take on the Cairns Taipans hopeful they could put their struggles in The Silverdome behind them, but in the end it was more of the same.

The reasons remain hard to pin down, but once again it was a tough offensive evening for both teams. The scoreline highlights that by the end of the game with the Taipans scoring the 75-69 victory.

Coming off Wednesday's loss at home to the Perth Wildcats where Roth felt the JackJumpers were outworked, that wasn’t the case against the Snakes with the all-round effort, rebounding performance and foul discipline vastly improved.

Tasmania held Cairns to 75 points which ordinarily would be a winning total. But the JackJumpers once more just couldn’t score inside The Silverdome shooting 38 per cent from the field including 4/25 from behind the three-point arc.

Roth has no idea why it keeps happening, but it's now a similar story over and over again in Launceston where the JackJumpers have now won just two of their nine games.

"It just feels like Groundhog's Day," Roth said.

"For two or three years now it's been the same and you just close your eyes and the score's roughly the same and we can't score a basket when we play here.

"It's just Groundhog Day and it's unfortunate, and we did solve some other problems throughout the course of the game with the rebounding and our aggressiveness which was great, but we just couldn’t score a basket.

"It just feel like it's a Groundhog's Day and it's been the same thing every time we've come up here. We just couldn’t have any kind of consistency of making shots to open the floor up and that makes it difficult.

"The floor gets smaller and the pressure mounts, and it can snowball into no one making them across the board and it is what it is at this point, and we just have to regroup when we come back here on Thursday."

One thing Roth could rule out about the JackJumpers struggles in Launceston was it being a mental thing from past appearances for the players given Bryce Hamilton, Nick Marshall, Tyger Campbell, Josh Bannan, TJ Starks and Ben Ayre all hit the floor for the first time for Tasmania in The Silverdome.

"Well we have a whole new group of guys here and I think there's only three who have actually played here, and (Anthony) Drmic didn’t travel so the other guys have no idea of what it's like," he said.

"They would have no recollection of our record here in general and we just don’t play very well for some reason."

Over the course of the nine games that the JackJumpers have now played in Launceston, they have tried all sorts of different routines and travel schedules but nothing seems to change what actually happens when the ball's thrown up.

This Thursday Tasmania are back at The Silverdome to host the South East Melbourne Phoenix with them again trying a different plan to see if it helps the ball go in the hoop.

"We've come up two days ahead of time and practiced here or we've come up here and practiced that same day, and this time we came up late in the evening so that we would just wake up and go to shootaround," Roth said.

"Now for Thursday, we're taking a bus up in the morning and playing the game, and bussing back home. We've tried to go down every possible angle to work out what it is, and that will be the next one to bus up on Thursday morning and bus back after the game."

Even though the JackJumpers lost to the Taipans back on Saturday, there was a lot to be encouraged about in the performance aside from the shooting numbers.

Tasmania won the rebound count by 14 including pulling down 16 offensive boards to five while they also got to the foul line 23 times to just 15 by Cairns so there was plenty for Roth to still take out of the game.

"We have obviously been stressing that leading into the game and we have been for the last two or three weeks to try to improve our effort on the boards, and our transition defence," Roth said.

"I thought that was a lot better and what we call our 40s up the floor was better, and our aggressiveness to play was better. So there are some positives to take out of this and it is what it is at this point.

"We sit 5-5 and last year we were 3-8 so this is a marathon, this is not a sprint and at the end of the day we have some bodies come back which will definitely impact our scoring and help us in some areas. We'll just drop our heads and go back to work."