Positive signs, obvious fixes for Eagles

East Perth Eagles men's coach Carl Filpo is somewhat surprised his team hasn’t hit the NBL1 West season running, but there have been encouraging signs with some glaring areas needing tidying up.

Filpo carefully plotted everything in the off-season for the Eagles to give them the best chance to back up returning to the finals last year for the first time in a decade.

That started with signing players to suit the system that he wanted his team to play with imports Max Rice and Matthew Lang providing the outside shooting he was after, Chier Maker offering a versatile player, Ioannis Dimakopoulos giving them a big target, and adding another ball handler with Fabian Johnson.

The pre-season hit outs then gave Filpo plenty to be encouraged about heading into the season proper, but then suddenly the Eagles allowed Emmett Naar and Isaac White to run riot in the opening night loss to the Rockingham Flames while giving up 115 points.

East Perth then gave up another 114 points with Lachlan Bertram and Julian Pesava combining for 65 of those in Saturday night's loss to the defending champion Magic in Mandurah.

Being 0-2 heading into the Easter Thursday road clash with the Eastern Suns wasn’t what Filpo was hoping for, but there are positives.

Even with Filpo feeling the offence can get a lot better, they have averaged 101.5 points over the first two games while playing at a lightning place creating the most possessions of any team in the country.

"Yes, we're happy with the offence but the scary thing for our opposition is that we can still get a lot better on that end," Filpo said.

"I'm going back and reviewing games and thinking we're leaving about 20 points out there.

"I know we've only played two games, but we're fifth nationally for points per game and we lead the country in possessions so the efficiency on that side whilst there's room for improvement is something we're pretty happy with."

Going back to the opening night of the season with the Eagles hosting the Flames, and Filpo was feeling good both because he thought their front court could take advantage of Rockingham missing Jervon Pressley and Travis Durnin along with containing their back court.

However, in the end the NBL calibre pairing of White (27 points, seven assists, five rebounds) and Naar (26 points, eight boards, six assists) proved the difference and Filpo learned some hard lessons that he needed his team to rectify.

"I think the first game really hit me hard because I did think we were in a better spot than that after the pre-season game we played which were a reflection of that," Filpo said.

"We won those convincingly outside of Joondalup where we only missed a shot on the buzzer. For the most part it was good but that Joondalup game did highlight something where we let Ethan Elliott go for 40 something points from memory, and now that has translated into our first two games.

"We thought we had put some things in place to have that covered, but then there's Isaac White just tearing us apart in transition. We went into that game thinking the only way they'd beat us was in transition and three-pointers so we were aware of it, but that's exactly what they did.

"The stat sheet says they had 60-odd fast break points to our 20-odd so there was a 46-point differential but I think they actually had more than that. You can't win games if that's happening if you are giving up that sort of number."

It was a long eight days working on things for the Eagles following that first up loss to Rockingham before heading to Mandurah last Saturday night.

While it was a better performance and the Eagles only ended up losing by five points, having Bertram put up 35 points and Pesava 30 showed to Filpo that they still have plenty of work to do on limiting the damage on those types of players.

"Then when we came up against Mandurah, they were missing a couple of their guys but I feel like what may have happened was their other guys felt like they had to step up and play out of their skin, and they did," Filpo said.

"I thought we were going really well in that game but again, we let a couple of guys get hot with Pesava in the first quarter and Bertram in the second, and then they just kept going.

"There was plenty we could have done about it, and we talked about making those adjustments, but it was too little too late by that point. It's been a focus on what we can do better in those situations moving forward and we have to make sure we carry that out."

Coming into the season and Filpo didn’t envision his team struggling to contain opposition back courts and he does feel it can be an issue quickly rectified, but playing at a fast pace with a high three-point shooting rate was a big focus for the Eagles to have as a strength of theirs.

"The gaps we had last year was more around perimeter shooting so we have filled those gaps with Max, Matthew, Chier and these guys, and it just so happens that they do get quick down the floor themselves because they are work rate guys," Filpo said.

"With Taylor there as well as Nick, they go a hundred miles an hour too so it is a case of wanting to play to our strengths. But in that Rocko game, we just turned it over too much as well and we were giving up live ball turnovers to give them even more fast breaks.

"There's that fine line between pushing the ball and making sure we're getting a great shot, which is one of the things we've been working on offensively. Scoring in the half court is one of the things that our talent and systems are there for, but getting stops is obviously the bigger focus out of everything."