Melbourne United will look to address their disciplinary issues after suffering back-to-back losses in round three of the NBL. Following two impressive wins to open the season plus an eye-catching performance against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Melbourne lost to Perth on Friday night before falling 88-76 at home to the New Zealand Breakers on Sunday. United played to a sold-out crowd of 10,300 fans at Hisense Arena but couldn't capitalise on a dominant performance from former NBA centre Josh Boone (22 points,14 rebounds). "It was nice to finally come home and actually have some cheers as opposed to boos," Boone said. "Unfortunately, we didn't reward them." "They came out to see us and we didn't give them enough of a reason to cheer tonight." Against the Wildcats and Breakers, United were unable to establish an attacking flow with excessive fouling sending their opponents to the free throw line and allowing them to control the pace of the game. Melbourne coach Dean Vickerman spoke to his squad before Sunday's game about limiting the number of fouls but it did not produce the desired result. "Yeah, it hasn't stopped yet," Vickerman said of United's foul trouble. "Tonight was a game where we picked up some early - some of them were ill-disciplined, some of them were really good effort plays that we just didn't get right." United copped two technical fouls against New Zealand, one resulting in Casey Prather sitting on four fouls in the first half. Vickerman was forced to bench his star recruit to begin the third quarter and the Breakers outscored United 17-6 to build an unassailable lead. Prather still finished with 20 points, six rebounds and five assists but the Breakers kept backcourt duo Casper Ware and Chris Goulding quiet whilst forcing United into a season-high 17 turnovers. Vickerman also felt his side struggled after combating injury trouble and a hectic travel schedule to open their campaign. "The challenge was to stay up as long as we could," Vickerman said. "Tonight it felt like we were just kind of trying to manage ourselves a little bit." "They were absolutely trying to give everything but it just didn't look the same ... we were missing that little effort and burst that we gave in Adelaide when we really needed something."
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