Round 11 Coaches Comments – Spirit vs. Capitals

Welcome everyone to another fantastic round of basketball. It was great to see our development players and bench do such a wonderful job last Saturday night when we played Townsville.

Ash Spencer shot well and attacked the Townsville defense to end with a career high of 12pts. We look forward to her continued development over the closing stages of the season and challenge her to go and see if she can post better numbers.

Ahlise Hurst, fresh from her high school team winning a bronze medal at the Australian Schools Championships, was especially pleasing to watch. Those who witnessed her will long remember the night, fearlessly attacking from the perimeter and using her speed to blow past the Townsville defense. Again we hope this is a sign of things to come and that Ahlise can replicate her performance again tonight against the University of Canberra Capitals.

The Unversity of Canberra Capitals come to us hot off a thrilling win to Dandenong Rangers last Saturday in which they scored well all game. The game was marred by a concussion injury to Rachel Jarry. The incident was sickening to me as a father and a coach. The Spirit really feel for Rachel and her family. Rachel has been a regular in the Opals and one of the toughest competitors in that team since Robyn Maher. We wish her a speedy recovery.

Tonight we are looking for Rachel Banham to be dominant after a disappointing round last weekend. She has been really focused in training this week and I am sure a good performance is within her this week.

Like all teams we want to win every game, but it time for our starters to produce early in the game. Last week we missed our first 7 shots while defending well. This week we must get off to a great start and put the pressure on the opposition to catch us.

Heather Oliver is subject to a fitness test on game-day but we are confident she will be ready to play, her defense on Natalie Hurst is something we used last time to defeat the University of Canberra Capitals. Gabe’s match up on Misty Bass and Nadeen on Ezi Magbegor will go a long way to determining the results tonight. Betnijah will be the hard player for the opposition to stop and she should dominate the offensive end, setting plays for everybody as well as scoring herself.

Pleas enjoy the game and send all the young ones out to get autographs after the game!