Warriors Head To Miami - Looking To Assert Physical Dominance Upfront

The East Coast has not been kind to the Utah Warriors although they hope to change that fact when taking on the Miami Sharks this weekend.

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Indeed the Warriors have won just two games on the east coast in their seven year history with both victories coming against New York. It’s a fact not lost on Warriors Coach Greg Cooper whose team took a tough 20-19 loss to the Sharks last season.

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“It’s hotter and there’s some significant travel involved and history isn’t on our side,” Cooper said. “For some reason we haven’t done well over there. So we’ve worked hard to identify the travel challenges and everything else and we’re hoping for a positive result.”

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The good news that Utah has already put up two very positive results over its first two games of the season despite last week’s hiccup versus Houston. But although the Warriors took a 37-17 loss to the Sabercats, Cooper believes what ailed his team can be fixed.

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“The score really didn’t reflect the closeness of the game,” Cooper said. “It got away from us from a score point of view, but…we just had at least four (scoring) opportunities for us that we didn’t take…I’m not suggesting we were on the top of our game, but we’re certainly not looking at that and saying things aren’t working. They are working.”

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The goal this week is to clean up the accuracy issues that plagued Utah in last week’s loss while continuing to assert physical dominance upfront.

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As for the Sharks, they come into Saturday’s game with two wins against two losses and have proven competitive and formidable every week.

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“They’re a good side,” Cooper observed. “In every game they’re in the fight and they have moments of (dominance) where every offload is sticking, but we’ve got to focus heavily on us. It really is about us in this game.”

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Another key will be preventing Miami from garnering home field momentum.

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“If we get a little relaxed with how we play the game then they have the ability to build a lot of momentum and put tries on you,” Cooper said. “Even in their loss to Chicago they were in that game until the very end…So we’re expecting them to be in the fight and for them to play hard for the entire 80 minutes.”

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From Cooper’s perspective, Utah has shown marked improvements in key areas such as line-out and scrum execution and continuing to build on those improvements, among others will be key.

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“Last week was a tough loss, but we have a lot of opportunity ahead of us starting this week,” Cooper said. “So we have to realize why we lost and what we have to fix.”

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