HEAD coach Paul James hopes his decision to revert to a “more structured and disciplined” playing style will pay dividends in the second half of the season.

Worcester Wolves’ boss revealed he tried to get his side to play a “different way” to previous seasons by giving players “a bit more freedom” on court.

However, after registering just five wins in 15 matches in the British Basketball League, he admitted that approach “had not worked” and agreed to make changes ahead of Wolves’ BBL Trophy clash against Sheffield Sharks last Friday.

Wolves won the match 99-68 to progress to the quarter-finals and James felt it could be a sign of things to come as they gear up for their trip to Bristol Flyers in the BBL tomorrow (7.30pm).

“I was really delighted because during that week in practice we went back to looking at more structured offences and going to those plays a lot more than the open play we have been doing over the course of the season so far,” he said.

“We have been a little clearer in what we wanted to have offensively and where we wanted to get our shots from and who we wanted to take them.

“At the start of the season I wanted to play in a different way to give players a bit more freedom to use their basketball IQ.

“It hasn’t worked as well as I had hoped so we have gone back to being more structured and disciplined with the sets we are running.

“It seemed to have worked against Sheffield and hopefully we can continue to play in that vein of form.”

With almost an entirely different side to last term, James also admitted it had “taken time” to “gel” as a team.

But he believes seventh-placed Wolves had “gone through the pain” and were set to put together a run of victories in 2017.

“It always takes time to build a team,” James added.

“You only have to look at some football clubs, like Manchester United, who had a terrible start to the season.

“But it takes time for players to gel and get used to things and that’s no different to basketball. It doesn’t matter who you bring in.

“When you bring all these guys in who haven’t played together before and you want to play a certain way, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but you have to figure it out.

“That happens over time so hopefully we have gone through that pain now and we can be very competitive and win a lot of games.”