LAKESIDE Lightning men's head coach Andy Stewart is shooting for his fourth men's SBL championship but knows his team still has plenty of work to do this weekend against East Perth.

The Lightning dominated the 2013 regular season finishing on a 23-3 record to end up five games clear on top of the standings with a 13-0 home record and finishing off the campaign with a seven-match winning run.

Lakeside then took on the BOQ Perth Redbacks in the quarters and comfortably took care of the first two matches to advance to the semi-final series against the People's Choice Eagles.

East Perth is a dangerous line-up even with Jarrod Balcombe out injured with Tom Jervis, Drew Williamson, Joe-Alan Tupaea, Michael Jones and Sunday Dech, and the Lightning certainly didn’t have it all their own way in Game 1 last Saturday night at Morley Sport and Recreation Centre.

The Eagles were in front still at three quarter-time, but Lakeside dominated the final period 32 points to 20 to run 98-88 winners to now be one-win away from a grand final appearance with Game 2 this Friday night at Lakeside Recreation Centre.

Last Saturday also doubled as head coach Stewart's 400th match in the SBL and with an outstanding win-loss record of 287-113 and with championships under his belt in 2005, 2006 and 2009 he knows what it takes to bring home a title.

He was just happy his team came through in the last quarter last weekend though.

"Absolutely I was happy with the last quarter, it's better than the other option," Stewart said.

"We are very comfortable with the way we finished it off but we weren’t too happy with a number of our decisions especially in the second and third quarters."

Stewart wasn’t overly happy with his team's defence last weekend particularly allowing Jones 15 three-point attempts, but he is hoping their rotations will work better this weekend after an extra week to work on it.

"That happened out of our rotations and it was really poor. We didn’t follow our rules on that at all and he is a good shooter. We gave him a couple early and he knocked them down so that was disappointing and one of the things that we have looked at in the review," he said.

"Basically we just weren’t willing to leave our players, which I suppose is a credit to them because you don’t feel confident leaving Drew Williamson to rotate onto someone else but it was part of the plan and we didn’t do it."

Stewart is fully aware of the talent that East Perth possesses in its line-up so even though Game 2 and Game 3, if required, will be at Lakeside Recreation Centre, he knows that the Lightning are still a long way from next Saturday night's grand final against either Wanneroo or Perry Lakes.

"They are a good team and they can put a lot of points on the board, they can create some mismatches, they are a big group and we have a couple of small point guards which they can exploit in the post as well," Stewart said.

"Tom is obviously a huge focus for them so I see it as just exactly as it was last Saturday night. It is going to be a battle where the game might not be that pretty, but you hope at the end of the siren you are in front."

Article by Chris Pike