"Dumb" mistakes hurting United's title charge

With now just two rounds remaining until Finals, Melbourne United have slipped outside the NBL’s top four following Saturday’s loss to Adelaide.

That result means Dean Vickerman’s side have lost five of their past eight matches, with time running out to regain their ‘mojo’ ahead of the post-season.

In Saturday’s post-game press conference, Vickerman said his team are their own worst enemy at times.

“We're taking energy away from ourselves right now with the way we're playing,” Vickerman said.

“We haven't got back to making the ball pop like it was earlier in the season. We have to figure that out.

“[For example] we held them (the 36ers) to 12 points in that second quarter and did a great job [defensively] but we should have turned that into 26 points ourselves instead of 16.

“We focused on what we wanted to do defensively and didn't finish those possessions well enough at all. That led to how efficient their bigs were and we just didn't do close to what we were hoping to do.

“Then up the other end, we had a good process with how we wanted to score but we couldn't finish well enough to win the game.

“We did some dumb things at the offensive end early, but we finished up taking 16 more shots, but we just didn't finish well enough to make the most of that.”

Vickerman wasn’t alone in that assessment, with import Milton Doyle echoing his sentiments.

“We did have some advantages out there, but couldn't take advantage of those and couldn't complete the plays.

“We sort of beat ourselves at times, so we have to get better at that.

“We just have to get back to work and keep doing all that we can to try and get back to being the team that we were earlier in the season.”

United next hit the court on Thursday with an away fixture in Cairns, which tips off at 7.30pm AEDT, live on ESPN.