Foul ball: "Outside influences" break Phoenix rhythm

Riding high after their biggest win of the season over Melbourne United, South East Melbourne came crashing back to Earth on Thursday night.

The Phoenix, who coming into the Round 12 clash were the best offensive team in the Hungry Jack's NBL26 competition, struggled to find their attacking groove at the Gippsland Regional Indoor Sports Stadium.

While coach Josh King admits it's tough to win games when you shoot 37 per cent from the field, including 9-of-38 from downtown, he doesn't believe it was the reason his team suffered their sixth loss of the 2025-26 campaign.

"We let outside influences influence the way we played, we have got to be better with foul discipline," King said in the post game press conference.

"We got in foul trouble early and we let that dictate how we played. We were more worried about the calls than the game.

"We can't allow things that we can't control in terms of calls, good or bad, frustrate us.

"On our end, we have got to do a better job of finishing possessions and having better foul discipline.

"[Further to that] we let too many straight line drives and allowed too many guys get on their strong hand. This is stuff we talk about a lot.

"It is frustrating, because I don't feel like that was our best. It's okay if you lose. You're going to lose to good teams.

"Their backs were up against the wall. We had talked about that and you want to lose going down fighting, in what you think is your best."

While King also admitted his side ran out of gas on the three day turnaround, the Phoenix have another game on the horizon, as the Breakers travel to Traralgon on Saturday.

That will mark the Phoenix third game in less than a week. But that isn't an excuse, according to King.

"I just told the guys that we've got a really good team coming here on Saturday night," King said.

"We'll have a bunch of fans here, hopefully pushing us over the top there, but we can't rely on that for energy.

"We have to again learn from this and our mistakes.

"New Zealand's playing really well and if we want to get a big win on Saturday, we're going to have to play better than we did on Wednesday for sure."

Saturday Round 12 clash tips off at 8pm AEDT, live on ESPN.