North Melbourne coach Brad Scott believes his side still have a "genuine hope" of playing in the finals this year.

The Roos moved to 4-8 following Friday night's 17-point loss to St Kilda at Etihad Stadium, a loss which now sees them two wins outside the eight and in 15th position.

That hasn't deterred Scott however, who said he would continue to select a side good enough to stay in the hunt for a finals berth.

"It's a strange season … we'll continue to play to win," Scott said in his post-match press conference on Friday night. 

"If that's a question around, 'Will we start to play around with our side to look at other players', no, we don't think those things are mutually exclusive at the moment.

"We've got a lot of players who we think can make us better, so we've got to look at the balance of the side. But we're still in that group of a number of teams who still have genuine hope to play in September and that's our ambition from this point on.

"So we'll keep trying to play footy that's capable of beating sides in September and we'll keep picking the team to win games to get enough wins to try and compete."

The North Melbourne coach also lamented his side's poor ball use in a sloppy performance, and suggested the Roos just couldn't deal with St Kilda's pressure around the ground.

"I just thought we invited a good pressure side to pressure us and they took the invitation willingly," Scott said.

"There are some times where you need to accept that the opposition's pressure is coming at you and just keep it simple, and we knew what was coming – it wasn't a surprise at all.

"We don't set out to, 'Let's have a certain kick-to-handball ratio today'. We attack based on what the opposition puts before us, in terms of the way we want to defend, and usually we're pretty good at discerning between the two.

"Tonight and particularly against Richmond (in round 11), we weren't."

North Melbourne will look to bounce back next Saturday night against the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium, before travelling to Queensland to face the Gold Coast Suns in two weeks' time.