THREE Queensland teams continue to battle it out for the remaining two NBL playoff spots and Taipans centre Ian Crosswhite isn't about to get ahead of himself.

The centre was realistically non-plussed in his post-game assessment of their 85-81 defeat of Townsville on Friday night, almost as if he knew what the Gold Coast were set to do in their game 24 hours later.

The Blaze, who are fighting with Cairns and Townsville for third and fourth spot, kept Wollongong to 50 points and scored 91 of their own on Saturday.

That effort came a week after suffocating the Taipans in a 76-49 defeat.

In light of the Blaze’s currently mesmerising form, and knowing how good the Crocs are at home, it was no wonder Crosswhite adopted the far-from-finished attitude on Friday night.

"We’ve got a long way to go – eight more to play," he said, straight-faced.

"We should be winning that one at home, the big one is going down there (to Townsville) and beating them on their court."

To get the win, the Taipans came home brilliantly – scoring 23 points in the last six minutes – but they had numerous chances to close the contest earlier than that, only to continually cough up double-digit leads.

Their inability to close out frustrated coach Aaron Fearne, who said they needed to start playing consistently or forget about playing post season.

"We know we need to be better than that and we have to be better than that," he said.

"We can’t play the game like a roller coaster and we have to improve there to go where we want to go."

In every quarter, the Taipans would surge ahead, only to lose their way when the match was in their grasp.

"We had three or four opportunities there where we had an eight or 10 point lead but let it go," Fearne said.

"We have this amazing ability to fight back from an eight or 10-point margin, but we also need that killer instinct to step on the throat."

The team still showed plenty of ticker and left the near-5000 fans satisfied.

"Definitely it was a big game for us; to bounce back off last week’s hiding," Fearne said.

"The group was under a bit of pressure after a loss like that and offensively we were good when maybe a few guys were a bit tight after last week."

It was Jamar Wilson who stepped up again in the final quarter after Alex Loughton and Drew Warren hit triples to level the scores.

Earlier in the contest, Warren kept the scorers busy to shrug off memories of the club’s lowest total yet one week earlier.

He nailed 11 points in the first 10 minutes with some trademark long-range bombs and eventually finished with a game-high 24.

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