Coach Rillie proud of team's fight after epic comeback against United

The Wildcats trailed for the majority of the night, including by 14 in the final quarter and as much as 20 earlier in the contest, before storming home for a series-levelling 96-89 triumph in front of 12,961 fans.

While Rillie admitted his team hadn’t played well for the first 60 minutes of the series, he was proud of their mentality to “stay with it and fight”.

“We hadn’t played good for 60 minutes in the series, but everyone has commented on how powerful our offence can be. We’d been very pedestrian,” Rillie said.

“I felt like we’d have our moment at some stage for that bubble to burst and just (had to) keep guys believing in that. I’m giving them credit. At every time-out, our mentality as a group to chip away and stay with it and the fight was unbelievable.

“All year I’ve been preaching to our team, everyone is going to get a moment or an opportunity. All you have to do is do your job. What your job is, is to play to the best of your ability.

“You saw Tai Webster with a great example of that tonight. Kristian Doolittle stuck with it. Dylan’s second half. You look at Ben Henshall’s statline, but he did a phenomenal job chasing Chris (Goulding) around all night. It’s not always going to be pretty but the uglier it got, the better I felt about us because we just kept fighting. If you keep fighting you give yourself a chance.”

It was a stunning finish with Perth piling on 33 last-term points to defeat United for the first time in NBL25 after five attempts.

Import Dylan Windler was the hero with 27 points, 11 rebounds, four assists, four blocks and two steals as the Wildcats forced a game three in Melbourne on Tuesday.