No excuses in tough times for JackJumpers

Nothing worth earning ever comes easily and for the Tasmania JackJumpers the battle to hold on to sixth position continues to get tougher as they now have a supremely quick turnaround to hosting the New Zealand Breakers on Sunday.

On the back of quite the emotional week which included losing captain Will Magnay and leading scorer Bryce Hamilton to season-ending injuries and with their most experienced player Majok Deng suffering a nasty concussion, the JackJumpers are in the middle of another gruelling weekend.

They had to play in Cairns on Friday night and if that wasn’t bad enough, by the time the game got to overtime they were without the injured Ben Ayre, the cramping Tyger Campbell and David Johnson had fouled out.

Then Jack McVeigh led the Taipans to the overtime win against the team he starred in a championship with, and now things don't get any easier for the JackJumpers.

With just four games in the season remaining, Tasmania remain in sixth position at 12-17 but now only one game ahead of the Breakers who they will be playing on Sunday at MyState Bank Arena.

While the Breakers did also play on Friday night where they beat Melbourne United in Auckland, their game finished two hours earlier than Tasmania's in Far North Queensland, they didn’t have to play overtime, and Cairns is another 1200km further from Hobart.

That doesn’t mean JackJumpers coach Scott Roth is looking for excuses, it's just the reality of the situation of Sunday's game which could have a big say on who ends up finishing sixth.

"There's not much we can do, the schedule's the schedule and I don’t understand it, but it is what it is at this point," Roth said.

"We'll just have to recover and as I told these guys, nothing's ever been given to us in our five years of existence and we have to earn it, and take it, if we can and that's what we'll try to do again on Sunday."

One big plus for the JackJumpers for the game on Friday night was that Majok Deng was able to return after missing Saturday night's loss to Illawarra on the back of suffering a nasty concussion on Thursday in Sydney against the Kings.

He was back into the starting line-up in the absence of Magnay and scored 10 of the team's first 12 points and ended playing his most minutes since joining the JackJumpers back in the NBL24 championship season and scoring his most points for Tasmania.

He finished the night with 28 points and eight rebounds with 10/12 shooting at the foul line with Roth not able to speak more highly of what he did especially given what happened to just eight days earlier.

"He's a competitor and we got off to a really poor start just in general, but Jook was really good despite that and he played 42 minutes and that's got to be almost a career-high for him so for him to battle through was really good," Roth said.

"He came into the game without practicing either aside from a mini one-on-one session before we left so for him to be down for seven or eight days and going through the protocols and doing the conditioning stuff but with not having any contact, it was really good on him.

"We're going to need more of that as well."

Looking back on Friday night's game in Cairns and Roth was proud of the way his team fought back from a 15-point deficit to hit the front in the fourth quarter before ending up losing in overtime with Johnson, Ayre and Campbell all unavailable.

In the end, though, he lamented that it just took too much energy for the JackJumpers to fight back from that deficit after they got in an early hole and that's where ultimately he felt the game was lost more so than what happened in overtime.

"The obvious one was that we just started really poorly and when you're down that many, the grind's real and I think it was 15 at half-time so we were already behind the eight ball and not just quite doing what we needed to get done," Roth said.

"But I'm super proud of our guys, they only had a 30-point second half and our guys fought extremely hard to get the ball back in our court a little bit.

"It was a tough battle and a really good game if you're a player to want to be playing in."

With the JackJumpers already without Magnay, Macdonald and Hamilton for the season, they have had to have players continue to pt themselves out there while well short of 100 per cent.

That included pugnacious guard Ben Ayre who aggravated his injury on Friday night and now is a game time decision for Sunday, but Roth will just continue to back whatever players he has available to continue to fight out on the floor.

"We have three guys that are hurt and two of them also played hurt in this game, and Ben was one of the three, and I can't pronounce what he has but he's had it for a month and it actually won't get better until he has two or three months off to rest it," Roth said.

"It's just been exasperated as we've had these games in a short amount of time and the other two guys, I don’t want to mention who they are but they're also quite hurt and the fact that they showed up today to play was a credit to them."

With the JackJumpers running out of fit and healthy bodies, Roth will continue to provide more opportunities to the likes of Nick Stoddart and Brody Nunn over the remaining four games both to help the team right now and for them to showcase what they can provide moving forward.

"We've got players dropping like flies here so himself (Stoddart) and Brody Nunn are going to have to get obviously some minutes spread out throughout there," Roth said.

"Again, it's also a really good period to evaluate them and see where they sit, and what that looks like for them down the road with us, but they're going to have some opportunities over the next whatever we have left, two weeks."