Versatile Doolittle preparing to defend "everybody" against United

The versatile Doolittle, fresh off winning the DPOY and player-voted Eric Watterson Medal at the Wildcats MVP Ball on Saturday night, is expected to spend time on multiple United players of various positions during the best-of-three series.

“I’m preparing for everybody. There’ll be moments in time where I’ll guard whoever is going or whether it is a time or situation or whether we need a big stop. I’ll usually be on whoever we think is going to be taking that shot, to make it as tough as possible,” Doolittle said.

“I prefer to guard a guard. Guarding a big ain’t fun because it’s a little more physical and they can wear you down, especially depending on however long I can guard them. A guard has more space. I feel like that’s where you can really show how good you are on defence, when you’re out in space. But I always say I’ll guard whoever I’ve got to.”

The Wildcats are 0-3 in contest against the second-placed United in NBL25.

But with a full roster to pick from for the fifth game in a row, Doolittle isn’t reading too much in that lop-sided season ledger.

“In the games that they beat us, besides the one where we didn’t play as ourselves and got beaten by like-30, I felt like we should have won both of those games,” Doolittle said.

“Due to our own mistakes we lost the game on our own. It’s not necessarily that you have to change everything, we’ve just got to be stronger in those moments.”

After Thursday’s clash, the Wildcats return home to host United at RAC Arena on Saturday night for game two before potentially heading back to Melbourne for the series decider on Tuesday.

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