HEAD coach Paul James says Worcester Wolves must cut out “foolish” and “rookie” errors if they want to maintain their British Basketball League play-off challenge.

Wolves’ four-match winning streak ended when they slumped to a 94-85 defeat at Cheshire Phoenix and James said he was “extremely frustrated” with the result.

“I think we are a better team than we showed and a lot of that was down to naivety,” said James, whose side led 77-72 with seven minutes remaining.

“We made some real rookie mistakes down the stretch.

“I thought we had got over that hump as we had been executing games really well at the end but we went back to making some really foolish errors, which was very disappointing as it allowed Cheshire to get back into the game.

"Win or lose, I don’t speak to the players after a game as I like to go away and review the video evidence and look at that with them, but certainly they need to see the errors and little things that we didn’t do that cost us the game.

“We should know when to box out, when to take care of the ball and when we need to run an offence, so it felt like we took one step backwards as it was a game that was winnable.”

James was pleased to progress to the BBL Trophy quarter-finals with a 83-76 victory over Bristol Flyers last Saturday but admitted his players’ mistakes had not gone unnoticed.

“Obviously we found a way to win in overtime but it was a game where if we had applied ourselves better, it would have been more comfortable,” he said.

“We missed 11 free throws in the fourth quarter alone, so all that time we weren’t putting Bristol under any pressure and they were able to take the game into overtime.

“Fortunately for us, we were able to close the game out.”