Sydney Spirit coach Rob Beveridge has praised his players' unwillingness to surrender after their gutsy 101-86 comeback win over the Perth Wildcats on Saturday night.
The Sydney siders backed up Friday's miraculous road victory over the Gold Coast Blaze with another strong finish to clinch a third consecutive victory.
Speaking after the match a delighted Beveridge conceded the knowledge they had overcome a large deficit the previous night strengthened the resolve of the group and predicted his often maligned side would continue to confound their critics as the season progresses.
"I believe this is a special young group that is starting to mature but in saying that I know we're going to have our ups and downs and I don't want to get ahead of ourselves," Beveridge said.
"Every game we are getting better and we're starting to execute a lot better and in particular I'm really pleased about the defensive ability to stop teams."
Beveridge said the latest win was very much a collective effort and conceded the Wildcats began to show the effects of a tough three-game-road-trip.
"We play 10 players for a reason and I think that wore them out tonight as well, I mean they had a very tough trip obviously playing Melbourne, Wollongong and then us," he said.
"And we knew if we could keep that pressure up consistently over the entire game I was very confident we could beat them."
"Although we played last night I still was very confident because we've come together as a group, they're really playing for each other."
But while Beveridge was pleased with outcome, he was less than impressed with the 20-of-36 return from the foul line.
"The only way I can describe it is absolutely disgraceful," Beveridge said of his side's efforts from the charity stripe."
"And that's something we've got to address … tonight we didn't make our foul shots and we fell behind."
"And that is so critical that I think last year we lost I think it was five or six games when we were leading down the stretch and you can attribute that to missing foul shots."
"Tonight I think we got out of jail just through hard work, it wasn't luck we worked our butts off to do that but the free-throw percentage right now is disgraceful and our players have got to put a lot of work in."