The Boston Celtics’ second quarter woes continued Friday night.
The Celtics traveled to Phoenix to take on the Suns in the final game of their five-game West Coast trip and didn’t come away with the result they hoped for handily losing the game 111-90.
Although the score may not show it, Boston actually looked very impressive early on — even with a short bench — but that momentum completely went away in the second quarter. The Celtics got outscored by 17 and while they did make some charges and cut the lead to low double-digits multiple times, they never could get over the hump.
Second quarter struggles have been damning for the Celtics lately and after Friday’s loss now have been outscored in the second quarter by 49 points over the last four games and have lost three straight.
After the game Friday night, Celtics head coach Ime Udoka addressed the squad’s struggles and broke down what he saw against the Suns.
“Shooting-wise I think we let our offense affect our play overall. Obviously a 15-point quarter after a decent first. Once the shots didn’t fall guys kind of started let it affect them on the defensive end. We gave up a ton of mistakes there, let them get out,” Udoka said. “We didn’t play with the same pace as the first quarter where we were emphasizing getting up and down but it’s tough to maintain much cohesion with our group when you’re not scoring the ball but you can’t let that affect you on the other end and I think we did that.”
Celtics forward Robert Williams also discussed the recent struggles and what happened in the second quarter against the Suns.
“Let the game get away from us obviously. Not sticking to the game plan,” Williams said. “Completely on us as players, can’t blame it on anyone else.”
On the bright side for the Celtics they now have a two straight off days as they travel back to Boston. They don’t return to the court until Monday night when they take on the Milwaukee Bucks at TD Garden. Hopefully by then the squad will have back Jaylen Brown and Josh Richardson as they try to right the ship.
