July 19, 2024 • 13 mins
The Wellington Saints will be unable to add to their record 12 National Basketball League titles in 2024, after a 104-67 thrashing by the Franklin Bulls in the play-in final at Wellington.
Franklin now advance to meet the Auckland Tuatara in the semifinals.
Saints coach Zico Coronel joined Adam Cooper to reflect on the season, and look at his coaching future.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's talk NBL basketball and the Wellington Saints will be
unable to this year add to their record twelve National
Basketball League championship titles. It was a play in game
at tesp Arena last night against the Franklin Bulls facing
off for a spot against the Auckland Tittata in the
semifinals next week. It was pretty much one way traffic
(00:22):
for the Franklin Bulls right the way through the game.
They finished with a one hundred and for sixty seven
win over the Wellington Saints. They started pretty strongly as well,
at twenty five to thirteen score line even by the
end of the first quarter. Well, we're very thankful and
lucky enough to be joined by Wellington Saints coach Zeko
Coronal to look back on the game, Zeico, really appreciate
(00:43):
you joining us nice and early after a late finish
last night. I guess the score line is not great reading.
How do you sum up a game like that.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I think that the Franklin Bulls deserve a lot of
credits for what they've been willing to build over the
course of the season, and certainly towards the close of
the season. They've been playing very good basketball and they
continued to do that last Nate and so that they
get the just rewards of a great performance and to
advance on to play Auckland on Wednesday. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I mean even in the opening minutes, Zeko, that their
energy was seeing them score a few quick points. I
got out to quite an early lead in just the
first couple of minutes. Were you confident at that point
that you had had what it took to contain them.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I think the early moments. I mean, if they were
going to play with this level of energy and we
weren't going to match this, then this was a little
bit the rating on the wall so early we needed
to see a market change from us, and I think
this eventually came to a degree in the third quarter.
(01:53):
But one of the difficulties of courses. We played a
lot better in the third quarter to basically make this
an even quarter. But this is insufficient when you dig
yourself such a whole.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, So what was the channel like at say halftime,
when you know you were also down but still you
know a possibility to come back. What were you saying
to your players at that that halftime break.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I mean I think that mostly obviously drest them a
psychology at that point, and trying to instill some belief
and optimism about how you have to go about this,
because obviously if you don't have the belief that you
can make a comeback, then it'll be unlikely to have
the effort. But I mean, talk is keep I mean,
(02:38):
this is obviously the cliche, but you know, it's just
not really about the half time chat. You can talk
a lot, it's about the actions that you got in
place or not.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Say it's a well known for in the league for
putting up you know, a lot of three pointers, but
that seemed to be an area of struggle last night.
I think it was three from thirty one and just
just nine percent. What from a coaching perspective, what can
often contribute to struggling from behind the circle?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
And then I think early in again the first quarter,
we went over eleven and these were basically good shots
and open shots for people who typically shoot these shots. Well,
three pointers to introduce more variants, which sometimes can be
beneficial for a particular team, and it can sometimes hurt.
(03:31):
And obviously I think we maybe led the league in
three point percentage on the year, but I don't think
it at a percentage that I would typically be happy with.
It's been a down year for shooting across the league,
but last night obviously was not a good night for us.
And then you know Franklin has done a very very
(03:53):
good job throughout the year. They have a leading defensive
Player of the Year candidate and Sam Timmins at just
under seven foot and he's had an amazing season and
how hard he's been willing to work has really stood out,
and he helps protect the room and been an import
lead skinner who plays at power forward. And then have
to really admire when you play them live. You can
really hear how much he communicates and how he holds
(04:15):
gays accountable, and you can always see what a great
defensive effort he gives. And when you have your big
setting that kind of foundation, and then a lot of
other players supporting this, they do a very good job
of barricading off the rim. So this makes it hard
necessarily to score close to the basket. You probably do
(04:36):
need to hit some trees to expand their defense, and
last night we were unable to do this.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Hiram Harris just again, Zeco seems to be everywhere on
court for the Saints. The stats show at as well
twenty one points and then six rebounds, four steals. But
he was just everywhere involved in almost every contest, wrestling
for the ball, being a force. Can you just talk
about him as a player and what he has brought
to the Saints this year.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, And then in many ways, h was saying to
be our foundation, our franchise player, if you like. And
earlier in the season we were six and one and
all the statistical indicators suggested we were the best team.
And then Hiram obviously had the injury and missed the
majority of the remainder of the season. We were very
(05:25):
very lucky that having cross through the Tall Blacks, the
Wellington Tall Blacks physio he got a hold of h
and got him right and we were able to get
him back. But the time that we lost without h
really driving the practices, driving the building of habits, driving
(05:46):
everything really hurt us. And even though he was back
and he played with phenomenal effort, and I mean, he
really is a warrior. You know, he's still he's back
one healthy, but they're still getting back to being at
the peak form that you have. And so and then
(06:06):
I mean each wad with a fever and I suppose
this is probably why you sort of cramping and things
like that, which is atypical for him. So yeah, there's
maybe not another tougher player, and it's going possible, and
we're very fortunate to have had each with us, and
we would have loved to see where we could have
got to if he had been a little bit more
(06:27):
lucky without suffering the injuries, because he really drives everything
for us.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, and just in general, z Echo, how tough was
it from a player perspective negotiating the whole season? I
know last night there were hopes that it would be
the first time the whole year that you had your
full playing roster available. Did that even happen?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Well, we didn't have our full roster last night. We
played the whole season zero seconds with our full roster.
So this has certainly been frustrating. I guess this is
how it can go sometimes, you know, sometimes you get
to have a year where you're pretty lucky with injuries
and illness and unavailability, and other years it's the other way.
(07:05):
And this share for us, it was the other way.
So to have a market impact, and I don't think
it's so much unnecessarily like last night. It's in some
ways the unavailabilities. You know, the playoff game, you have
to build competency and habits to be able to compete,
and we have been unable to do that for multiple reasons,
(07:29):
which the injuries player pardon. And you get to that
situation where you have to have a certain level of
competency to compete with a great team like Franklin, and
we don't have that competency. So at that point you're
kind of helpless, and you know they're able to pose
questions to you that you basically don't have the capacity
to answer. And when this occurs, then you can see
(07:51):
a scoreline occur late last night, especially when you add
in the shooting variance which was in their favor.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
How do you reflect on the as a whole, Zeco.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I think we've both used the word frustrating. This is
probably it's another word that comes to mind. We spoke
about in the locker room last night, like we will
all experience regrets in our life, basketball life, whatever all
of us do, including yourself and every listener that you have,
(08:24):
and we sort of spoke about that. You know, we're
going to have some regrets about the season. These can
either continue to be a regret that hurts us for
a long time, but in some ways it's a superhero
origin story. Do you take that regret and make it
the learning something magical and amazing that comes later. If
you're able to do this, then the regret almost becomes
(08:47):
the beginning of the origin story for something great. And
so hopefully our players, our staff, our club, everyone who's
being involved learned something great from the season and it's
able to inform them to go forward and how conduct themselves,
how they behave, and it allows them to achieve their goals, dreams,
something magical in the future. And if that's the key,
(09:07):
then we be able to record base something from the season,
even though it obviously didn't finish with the results that
we would have hoped it would have.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Wanted to ask about Troy Plumtree. We obviously didn't see
him in these last sort of months or so of
the competition because he was away with the New Zeland
under seventeen team in their historic Worlds Cup journey. But
he's still at Wellington College. He was, you know, quite
a force for the Saints when he actually got on
the court this season. What kind of future do you
see him having in the games ECO and what's sort
of the key from a coaching perspective to him, you know,
(09:36):
maximizing his talent at this point.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I mean, my first thing is that Wellington College has
been amazingly supportive and allowing Troy to be a part
of the team. They've made a lot of sacrifices, so
we'd love to thank their principle, their deans, the teachers,
everyone who's probably gone out of their way to do
a little extra to allow Troy to be able to
be a part of it. You know, Troy was a
(10:01):
significant contributor for US early, but as was often the
case with young players, he has a lot of different
entities pulling at his time and to Steven Adams tour
and school basketball, and then also obviously the New Zealand
at seventeens, which I mean is incredible that they made
the semi finals of World Cup and Troy was an
(10:22):
instrumental part of that. So he's had an amazing year
and this has been great for him. It did obviously
impact his ability to be with US because I mean
he has obviously with the young guys watching last night,
that he's only rejoined us about two days ago after
being away for about six seven weeks, and as a
(10:44):
young player, all young players already so much to learn
when they joined professional level for the first time, and
so to miss six seven weeks it makes it very,
very hard to keep up. But I think we're seeing,
as you're saying, a lot of potential, a lot of
talent there, and hopefully, as we said, it's a huge
(11:04):
learning curve for Troy, and then if this informs the
way he goes about it the remainder of his last
year of high school and then into next year, which
probably December through August will probably act as some type
of gap year before he goes off to college in
August of twenty twenty five. Hopefully he's learned things that
inform the way he prepares and the talent is there,
(11:26):
and so if he does all the right things, then
he can go on to be a very good player.
But the story kind of remains to be written. There's
a lot of promising people at this age sixteen seventeen,
and it can march est into being great or it cannot.
And this is really all ahead of Troy, and he
(11:46):
has the capacity to do it. So the challenge is
there for him.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, well we're hoping that he does succeed. And Ziko,
you came back to the Saints this year after some
stints in Japan. What is next for you? Now the
NBL season's over.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
So I go back to Japan. I've stayed with Whatsanama
and which is in Bye was just the first divisions
where Isaac Forto has played the last few years and
will be familiar to MU Zealand listeners. And also Kevin Braswell,
who I assisted with the Saints in sixteen and seventeen
and he's gone on to coach obviously in different leagues
(12:23):
and is now also in Japan, is now the head
trich VS. So this team was fifty one and name
last year in the regular season and then lost in
the first round of the playoffs. So permission for us
is clear, and I guess I faking common and help
maybe add a few little pieces of vice or things
that could help them. They're already obviously a great club
(12:45):
and a great team, but can we get a few
extra steps and add an additional championship to the two
that they already have in about the eight years that
the B League has been in existence.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Nice and are you contemplating coming back to the Saints
next year. Can that fit in with your schedules? Echo?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
No, The Japan season goes through till May, hopefully June.
So this is a genuine full time league and this
pretty much means that this becomes your one hundred percent focus.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Okay, Well, thanks for your time, Zecho, I really appreciate it.
So I'm was fronting up after the result last night,
a late finish at teespe Arena as well. Ready appreciate
your time. Congratulations on that that new opportunity in Japan
as well. It's been great having you back in Wellington
this year and all the best. Thanks for your time.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, thank you for your interest in basketball and support
for our team, irrespective of whether it was good or
bad last night. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
For more from News Talks ed B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.
Let's talk NBL basketball and the Wellington Saints will be
unable to this year add to their record twelve National
Basketball League championship titles. It was a play in game
at tesp Arena last night against the Franklin Bulls facing
off for a spot against the Auckland Tittata in the
semifinals next week. It was pretty much one way traffic
(00:22):
for the Franklin Bulls right the way through the game.
They finished with a one hundred and for sixty seven
win over the Wellington Saints. They started pretty strongly as well,
at twenty five to thirteen score line even by the
end of the first quarter. Well, we're very thankful and
lucky enough to be joined by Wellington Saints coach Zeko
Coronal to look back on the game, Zeico, really appreciate
(00:43):
you joining us nice and early after a late finish
last night. I guess the score line is not great reading.
How do you sum up a game like that.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I think that the Franklin Bulls deserve a lot of
credits for what they've been willing to build over the
course of the season, and certainly towards the close of
the season. They've been playing very good basketball and they
continued to do that last Nate and so that they
get the just rewards of a great performance and to
advance on to play Auckland on Wednesday. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I mean even in the opening minutes, Zeko, that their
energy was seeing them score a few quick points. I
got out to quite an early lead in just the
first couple of minutes. Were you confident at that point
that you had had what it took to contain them.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I think the early moments. I mean, if they were
going to play with this level of energy and we
weren't going to match this, then this was a little
bit the rating on the wall so early we needed
to see a market change from us, and I think
this eventually came to a degree in the third quarter.
(01:53):
But one of the difficulties of courses. We played a
lot better in the third quarter to basically make this
an even quarter. But this is insufficient when you dig
yourself such a whole.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, So what was the channel like at say halftime,
when you know you were also down but still you
know a possibility to come back. What were you saying
to your players at that that halftime break.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I mean I think that mostly obviously drest them a
psychology at that point, and trying to instill some belief
and optimism about how you have to go about this,
because obviously if you don't have the belief that you
can make a comeback, then it'll be unlikely to have
the effort. But I mean, talk is keep I mean,
(02:38):
this is obviously the cliche, but you know, it's just
not really about the half time chat. You can talk
a lot, it's about the actions that you got in
place or not.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Say it's a well known for in the league for
putting up you know, a lot of three pointers, but
that seemed to be an area of struggle last night.
I think it was three from thirty one and just
just nine percent. What from a coaching perspective, what can
often contribute to struggling from behind the circle?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
And then I think early in again the first quarter,
we went over eleven and these were basically good shots
and open shots for people who typically shoot these shots. Well,
three pointers to introduce more variants, which sometimes can be
beneficial for a particular team, and it can sometimes hurt.
(03:31):
And obviously I think we maybe led the league in
three point percentage on the year, but I don't think
it at a percentage that I would typically be happy with.
It's been a down year for shooting across the league,
but last night obviously was not a good night for us.
And then you know Franklin has done a very very
(03:53):
good job throughout the year. They have a leading defensive
Player of the Year candidate and Sam Timmins at just
under seven foot and he's had an amazing season and
how hard he's been willing to work has really stood out,
and he helps protect the room and been an import
lead skinner who plays at power forward. And then have
to really admire when you play them live. You can
really hear how much he communicates and how he holds
(04:15):
gays accountable, and you can always see what a great
defensive effort he gives. And when you have your big
setting that kind of foundation, and then a lot of
other players supporting this, they do a very good job
of barricading off the rim. So this makes it hard
necessarily to score close to the basket. You probably do
(04:36):
need to hit some trees to expand their defense, and
last night we were unable to do this.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Hiram Harris just again, Zeco seems to be everywhere on
court for the Saints. The stats show at as well
twenty one points and then six rebounds, four steals. But
he was just everywhere involved in almost every contest, wrestling
for the ball, being a force. Can you just talk
about him as a player and what he has brought
to the Saints this year.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, And then in many ways, h was saying to
be our foundation, our franchise player, if you like. And
earlier in the season we were six and one and
all the statistical indicators suggested we were the best team.
And then Hiram obviously had the injury and missed the
majority of the remainder of the season. We were very
(05:25):
very lucky that having cross through the Tall Blacks, the
Wellington Tall Blacks physio he got a hold of h
and got him right and we were able to get
him back. But the time that we lost without h
really driving the practices, driving the building of habits, driving
(05:46):
everything really hurt us. And even though he was back
and he played with phenomenal effort, and I mean, he
really is a warrior. You know, he's still he's back
one healthy, but they're still getting back to being at
the peak form that you have. And so and then
(06:06):
I mean each wad with a fever and I suppose
this is probably why you sort of cramping and things
like that, which is atypical for him. So yeah, there's
maybe not another tougher player, and it's going possible, and
we're very fortunate to have had each with us, and
we would have loved to see where we could have
got to if he had been a little bit more
(06:27):
lucky without suffering the injuries, because he really drives everything
for us.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, and just in general, z Echo, how tough was
it from a player perspective negotiating the whole season? I
know last night there were hopes that it would be
the first time the whole year that you had your
full playing roster available. Did that even happen?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Well, we didn't have our full roster last night. We
played the whole season zero seconds with our full roster.
So this has certainly been frustrating. I guess this is
how it can go sometimes, you know, sometimes you get
to have a year where you're pretty lucky with injuries
and illness and unavailability, and other years it's the other way.
(07:05):
And this share for us, it was the other way.
So to have a market impact, and I don't think
it's so much unnecessarily like last night. It's in some
ways the unavailabilities. You know, the playoff game, you have
to build competency and habits to be able to compete,
and we have been unable to do that for multiple reasons,
(07:29):
which the injuries player pardon. And you get to that
situation where you have to have a certain level of
competency to compete with a great team like Franklin, and
we don't have that competency. So at that point you're
kind of helpless, and you know they're able to pose
questions to you that you basically don't have the capacity
to answer. And when this occurs, then you can see
(07:51):
a scoreline occur late last night, especially when you add
in the shooting variance which was in their favor.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
How do you reflect on the as a whole, Zeco.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I think we've both used the word frustrating. This is
probably it's another word that comes to mind. We spoke
about in the locker room last night, like we will
all experience regrets in our life, basketball life, whatever all
of us do, including yourself and every listener that you have,
(08:24):
and we sort of spoke about that. You know, we're
going to have some regrets about the season. These can
either continue to be a regret that hurts us for
a long time, but in some ways it's a superhero
origin story. Do you take that regret and make it
the learning something magical and amazing that comes later. If
you're able to do this, then the regret almost becomes
(08:47):
the beginning of the origin story for something great. And
so hopefully our players, our staff, our club, everyone who's
being involved learned something great from the season and it's
able to inform them to go forward and how conduct themselves,
how they behave, and it allows them to achieve their goals, dreams,
something magical in the future. And if that's the key,
(09:07):
then we be able to record base something from the season,
even though it obviously didn't finish with the results that
we would have hoped it would have.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Wanted to ask about Troy Plumtree. We obviously didn't see
him in these last sort of months or so of
the competition because he was away with the New Zeland
under seventeen team in their historic Worlds Cup journey. But
he's still at Wellington College. He was, you know, quite
a force for the Saints when he actually got on
the court this season. What kind of future do you
see him having in the games ECO and what's sort
of the key from a coaching perspective to him, you know,
(09:36):
maximizing his talent at this point.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I mean, my first thing is that Wellington College has
been amazingly supportive and allowing Troy to be a part
of the team. They've made a lot of sacrifices, so
we'd love to thank their principle, their deans, the teachers,
everyone who's probably gone out of their way to do
a little extra to allow Troy to be able to
be a part of it. You know, Troy was a
(10:01):
significant contributor for US early, but as was often the
case with young players, he has a lot of different
entities pulling at his time and to Steven Adams tour
and school basketball, and then also obviously the New Zealand
at seventeens, which I mean is incredible that they made
the semi finals of World Cup and Troy was an
(10:22):
instrumental part of that. So he's had an amazing year
and this has been great for him. It did obviously
impact his ability to be with US because I mean
he has obviously with the young guys watching last night,
that he's only rejoined us about two days ago after
being away for about six seven weeks, and as a
(10:44):
young player, all young players already so much to learn
when they joined professional level for the first time, and
so to miss six seven weeks it makes it very,
very hard to keep up. But I think we're seeing,
as you're saying, a lot of potential, a lot of
talent there, and hopefully, as we said, it's a huge
(11:04):
learning curve for Troy, and then if this informs the
way he goes about it the remainder of his last
year of high school and then into next year, which
probably December through August will probably act as some type
of gap year before he goes off to college in
August of twenty twenty five. Hopefully he's learned things that
inform the way he prepares and the talent is there,
(11:26):
and so if he does all the right things, then
he can go on to be a very good player.
But the story kind of remains to be written. There's
a lot of promising people at this age sixteen seventeen,
and it can march est into being great or it cannot.
And this is really all ahead of Troy, and he
(11:46):
has the capacity to do it. So the challenge is
there for him.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, well we're hoping that he does succeed. And Ziko,
you came back to the Saints this year after some
stints in Japan. What is next for you? Now the
NBL season's over.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
So I go back to Japan. I've stayed with Whatsanama
and which is in Bye was just the first divisions
where Isaac Forto has played the last few years and
will be familiar to MU Zealand listeners. And also Kevin Braswell,
who I assisted with the Saints in sixteen and seventeen
and he's gone on to coach obviously in different leagues
(12:23):
and is now also in Japan, is now the head
trich VS. So this team was fifty one and name
last year in the regular season and then lost in
the first round of the playoffs. So permission for us
is clear, and I guess I faking common and help
maybe add a few little pieces of vice or things
that could help them. They're already obviously a great club
(12:45):
and a great team, but can we get a few
extra steps and add an additional championship to the two
that they already have in about the eight years that
the B League has been in existence.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Nice and are you contemplating coming back to the Saints
next year. Can that fit in with your schedules? Echo?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
No, The Japan season goes through till May, hopefully June.
So this is a genuine full time league and this
pretty much means that this becomes your one hundred percent focus.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Okay, Well, thanks for your time, Zecho, I really appreciate it.
So I'm was fronting up after the result last night,
a late finish at teespe Arena as well. Ready appreciate
your time. Congratulations on that that new opportunity in Japan
as well. It's been great having you back in Wellington
this year and all the best. Thanks for your time.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, thank you for your interest in basketball and support
for our team, irrespective of whether it was good or
bad last night. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
For more from News Talks ed B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.
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