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WAYBACK Wednesday was a weekly feature I wrote last season for Adelaide 36ers website, which now you can revisit, see for the first time or completely ignore!

ADELAIDE 36ERS V PERTH WILDCATS

THE JUNGLE, CHALLENGE STADIUM, JUNE 19,1998

BRETT Maher’s first game as Adelaide’s captain in a playoff series concluded with the 36ers delivering an emphatic 114-97 punch to Perth's play-off chin, setting up a 2-0 Semi Final knock-out.

The 36ers seized a 1-0 lead in their best-of-three National Basketball League Semi Final series behind a sensational 36-point career-high game by Maher, who also led the Sixers with six assists.

He shot at a mesmerising 74 per cent, including 7-of-11 three-pointers.

He strung together three unanswered triples in succession during the second quarter, turning a 38-34 lead into a 47-34 buffer and setting in motion an Adelaide offensive juggernaut which Perth, at key times, was powerless to stall.

Darnell Mee was his usual effective self, adding a game-high 14 rebounds to his 16 points as he terrorised Perth's backcourt and set an aggressive defensive tone from the outset.

It took the Wildcats until 7:37 left in the first quarter to connect on their first field goal against a hustling, rotating Adelaide defence and only a lopsided foul count in that first term kept Perth within touch at quarter-time.

John Rillie drove to the hoop and pulled up for a jumpshot to beat the quarter-time buzzer, an effort he repeated to close the third term when the 36ers broke eight-straight Wildcat points to lead 84-72 with a quarter to play.

The Sixers, who finished shooting at an almost indecent 57 per cent clip, led 58-47 at half-time and opened with Maher banging a three, Martin Cattalini scoring a runner, then swishing a three of his own.

Adelaide was ahead 68-51 when Ricky Grace took advantage of Mee having to double-team James Crawford by stringing together eight points.

A subdued Scott Fisher hit a three with 4:34 left in the third and Perth had it back to six points at 68-62.

But before the Wildcats even had time to contemplate the merits of their comeback, Kevin Brooks swished two 3-pointers in 18 seconds, Mee followed with a tip-in and the margin was back out to 76-62.

Perth coach Alan Black left no stone unturned trying to stop the onslaught, playing zone on Adelaide scores, man-to-man on misses, pressing, trapping, all, ultimately, to no avail.

Trailing 75-86 with 11:14 left, Perth again was nonplussed at a 13-0 run engineered by some superlative defensive pressure and some exquisite offence by Maher and Cattalini, who had a 3-pointer and two dunks in his nine-point last term.

Perth had its work cut out to force the series to a deciding Game 3, a sweep at the Clipsal Powerhouse always the more likely scenario.

Before Game 1, Black had declared the Wildcats' interior game would be Adelaide's undoing.

“Their concern should be how they're going to guard us,” Adelaide 36ers coach Phil Smyth said.

“Who's going to guard Kevin (Brooks), for example?

“Or Mahersy?”

Smyth’s words proved prophetic.

“He was unbelievable,” Smyth would later say of Maher’s first finals performance as a captain, an adjective he would use many times in the following years.