THE Taipans' bid to close out the NBL season strongly tomorrow faces great resistance from a New Zealand side desperate to seal a place in the top four.

With an injured Scott Cook staying in Cairns yesterday as he battles to prepare for Saturday’s final fixture of the season, the Taipans flew into Auckland with just nine fit players.

"They need to win one more of their last two games to secure a home final, so I guess for them, there’s a lot to play for," Taipans coach Mark Beecroft said of the Breakers.

"For us, we go in there knowing that we’ve had success there.

"They went on that patch in the middle of the season where I think they were the most in-form team, ahead of the Dragons and ahead of (Melbourne) Tigers, it’s really been the last couple of weeks that they’ve struggled and gone off the boil a bit."

The Breakers were beaten by both Adelaide and Wollongong on their Australian road double last weekend, although they did not have the services of sharp-shooter Kirk Penney.

"Kirk Penney’s been out, I think that he’s been a big key for them," Beecroft said. …"I would imagine that he’ll be back for our game and, hopefully, that displaces them some and we’ll just see what we can do. We obviously bounced back after the (loss in Townsville to the) Crocs, we went down and beat Sydney without Ian (Crosswhite)."

Guard Darnell Mee is likely to take on a bigger workload with Cook unable to play.

He said tomorrow’s match would be no more difficult than anything the Taipans had faced recently

"Since December, everything has been tough," Mee said.

"We haven’t gone into a game thinking, ‘we’ve got this won’, it just isn’t going to happen."

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