Perth Wildcats coach John Rillie has marvelled at his team’s mental fortitude and determination saying he had incredible faith that they could fight back from 20 points down to win their semifinal against Melbourne at RAC Arena.

The Wildcats won 96-89 despite still being 14 points down early in the final quarter. Dylan Windler inspired his team with an epic play-off performance. The American score 27 points, won 11 rebounds, had four assists, four blocks and two steals as Perth levelled the best-of-three semifinal series.

Perth scored 33 points in the final quarter to beat Melbourne for the first time this season.

Rillie said the team never considered giving up and always believed they were going to win.

“We hadn’t played good for 60 minutes in the series, but everyone has commented on how powerful our offence can be. We’d been very pedestrian,” Rillie said.

“I felt like we’d have our moment at some stage for that bubble to burst and just (had to) keep guys believing in that. I’m giving them credit. At every time-out, our mentality as a group to chip away and stay with it and the fight was unbelievable.

“All year I’ve been preaching to our team, everyone is going to get a moment or an opportunity. All you have to do is do your job. What your job is, is to play to the best of your ability.

“You saw Tai Webster with a great example of that tonight. Doolittle stuck with it. Dylan’s second half. You look at Ben Henshall’s statline, but he did a phenomenal job chasing Chris (Goulding) around all night. It’s not always going to be pretty but the uglier it got, the better I felt about us because we just kept fighting. If you keep fighting you give yourself a chance.”

Melbourne have done a brilliant job of keeping Bryce Cotton quiet all season and that meant Perth needed other players to shine. Kristian Doolittle had 17 points, 11 rebounds and six assists, Jesse Wagstaff scored eight points in the second quarter and Webster had nine points in the second half.

That piled the pressure on Melbourne and left Shai Ili in foul trouble. Cotton kept attacking and scored 18 points for the night.

Rillie said his team had an amazing ability to read a game and understand when it’s time to put the ball in the hands of the player who is having a night to remember and looks like being their matchwinner.

“When someone is rolling, or we feel like we can capitalise on their brilliance, we want to go to that. We’re fortunate enough that we have guys that have that dynamic playmaking and scoring ability amongst our group,” he said.