Eagles Preview – Round 4

It's a single game weekend again for the East Perth Eagles in Round 4 back home against the Perry Lakes Hawks on Saturday evening at the Peter Campbell Basketball Arena.

Round 4 of the NBL1 West season will see the Eagles back at their new home on the Peter Campbell Basketball Arena at Morley Sport and Recreation Centre to face the Hawks on Saturday evening.

The women's contest opens proceedings at 5pm with the men's contest to follow at 7pm.

The East Perth women's team come into the match up hunting a first win of the season up against a Perry Lakes team having now lost its past two matches as well.

The Hawks will have already played in Round 4 on Friday night before the clash with the Eagles too when they take on a Redbacks team that beat East Perth last Saturday at Belmont Oasis by 18 points following the arrival of Anneli Maley.

So both teams come into the contest desperate for a win with the Eagles having lost their first four matches of 2024 with two of those against the Warwick Senators along with road defeats to the Kalamunda Eastern Suns and Perth Redbacks.

Perry Lakes started its season with a 79-point win over the Eastern Suns but has since lost to the Senators and Rockingham Flames.

East Perth will regain the services of Mary Goulding for the clash at home to the Hawks with Laci Hawthorne (21 points, four rebounds, four assists), Mary Baskerville (21 points, 15 boards) and Tessa Morrison (13 points, five assists, three rebounds) looking to build on what they did last week against the Redbacks.

Then that will lead into the men's match up at Peter Campbell Basketball Arena with East Perth up against a new-look Perry Lakes team who would have already played against the Redbacks on Friday.

The Eagles come into Round 4 with a 1-3 record but having played better basketball than that suggests including a heartbreaking loss last Saturday on the road to the Redbacks.

Now Perry Lakes will play that same Perth team on Friday before coming to Morley Sport and Recreation Centre to face the Eagles on Saturday evening.

The Hawks come into the weekend with a 1-2 record and it's a decidedly new-look team with three-time championship winning coach Matt Parsons having moved on along with star players including Ben Purser, Rob Cassier, Mitch Clarke and Andrew Ferguson.

That sets up a fascinating battle on Saturday at home for the Eagles who are attempting to win a second game of the season and to start getting some reward for the encouraging basketball they are playing.

Eagles power forward Sharif Watson is coming up against all the teams in the NBL1 West for the first time and Saturday will be the first time he has played Perry Lakes.

He is looking forward to the experience and is confident that the Eagles will put it all together to start building some momentum.

"I'm definitely looking forward to getting onto another new court and playing another team for the first time," Watson said.

"I don't really know any of these times because I'm so new to being out here with Perth being so far away so it's not as easy to keep track of everything like over in the East.

"But everything is new to me and I'm respecting the game, and putting my time in to learn the scout and find out who all these guys are, and learn about their pedigrees and the pedigrees of the programs we come up against.

"I've heard Perry Lakes is one of those premier teams usually so it will be a good thing for us to be able to come up against them and hopefully get a win under our belt to have our season feel like it's going in the right direction."