Shawn Redhage was inspired by some of the play of his teammates in Friday's Grand Final Game One win over Wollongong and he hopes that continues on the road on Tuesday.
Redhage himself came out determined to make the most of his first trip to the NBL Grand Final in his fifth season with the Wildcats and scored seven of his 15 points in the first quarter, and he played a terrific captain's game to help the 'Cats to the 75-64 win at Challenge Stadium.
That victory puts the Wildcats just one win away from a fifth NBL titles and Redhage could join Mike Ellis, Cal Bruton and Andrew Vlahov as captains of Wildcats championship winners.
All season the Wildcats have focused on their strong defence and that was again on show against the Hawks in Game 1 keeping them to 64 points, 18 turnovers and shooting 36.8 per cent from the field.
Bash brothers Damian Martin and Brad Robbins have led the way defensively all season, and Redhage gets a lift from watching them go about their business.
"It all starts with our defence and being able to get some steals and easy buckets," Redhage said.
"Brad Robbins and Damian Martin were inspirational out there, and you could just see that Robbo was spent out there at times but he was still playing D and getting steals. It's pretty powerful when you're watching that from the bench."
Redhage was impressed with how his team played to win Game 1, but knows the Wildcats can't get ahead of themselves given Wollongong has lost just once at home all season.
"Take your hat off to Wollongong, they were a great team out there and that's what you expect in a Grand Final. They just kept coming at us and stayed in it when we gave them our best shots," Redhage said.
"We're staying focused, though, because in this league things can change so quickly and we have a huge task ahead of us in Game 2. Only one team has gone in there to win this season. If we can do that, then we deserve where we are at and we are looking forward to the challenge."
Cameron Tragardh, Larry Davidson and Glen Saville all had below par games on Friday, so Redhage expects them to all bounce back. However, he feels this is a special Perth team and could get the job done.
"They shoot the ball so well, play so much more confident it seems at home and you'd expect Tragardh and Davidson will play a lot better, and shoot the ball along with Sav," he said.
"We have our work cut out for us and what we did in this game won't get it done in Wollongong. We'll have to take it to a special level and we'll see if the guys can do that.
"There's a belief, but we also know we've got a lot of work to do and we have to get better over these next couple of days. We know Wollongong will give us their best shot."
As well as his 15 points, Redhage collected eight rebounds and that was of his focus coming into the game and he hopes that continues in Wollongong on Tuesday.
"That was one of my focuses coming into the game. Tragardh and Davidson are great rebounders, and they get a lot of their points out of that so we had to make sure we dominated the boards," he said.
"They had seven offensive boards at half-time and we talked about limiting those and they only got four in the second half with most of them coming in the first couple of minutes. After that we shut them down and we'll have to do even better come Tuesday night."
