It starts with me: Mooney

John Mooney said he needs to lead the way for his team to claim a Game Three win in Melbourne on Friday.

Despite finishing with a team-high 17 points and nine rebounds, the All-NBL First Team star said he has to be  accountable.

“It starts with me, their big fella had 17 boards, so it starts with me. If I had some more rebounds it would help the team,” he said.

“I think everyone can do one or two more things to help.

“It’s little things that are fixable. A 50-50 ball, don’t miss an assignment on a block out, don’t miss an assignment on a guy cutting behind you. Little things like that.”

The Wildcats travel to Melbourne on Wednesday for the Friday game – a day earlier than it would normally due to COVID safety measures.

Mooney said that won’t bother his team.

“It’s Grand Final time now, we don’t really care about that stuff,” he said.

“We get tomorrow, practice Thursday, pretty similar to if we were at home. It’s probably good, we can get an extra night in those beds.

“It’s a home-away-from-home in Melbourne. We were there for a while, so we’re going to enjoy that, and let it rip.”

While down 0-2 in the series, the double-double machine said his team is in no mood to lie down.

“We’re a confident group, we’ve spent too much time in the off-season. We’ve worked too hard this entire season to give up right now.

“We’ve just got to go in there a play our tails off. We’ve been playing super hard. The mentality is the same, we’ll take it one game at a time and one quarter at a time.”

Friday’s game tips off at 5.30pm on ESPN and VICELAND.