Hume City Lady Broncos’ premiership hopes hinge on Saturday night’s game against Ringwood Hawks in the Big V state basketball championship.
Hawks took the lead in the best-of-three grand final series, shutting down the Lady Broncos’ scoring opportunities in the first match to win 67-53 on Hume’s home court.
“We couldn’t find a way to get easy points,” Lady Broncos coach Warren Taylor said.
“The problem was at our end. I can’t remember a game where we had only 20-odd points by half-time.”
The performance of the Hawks’ Amber Hegge didn’t help Hume’s case, either.
Hegge is one of the MVP favourites after leading the season’s rebounds and sitting in second place for average points per game.
“I’ve never seen a quarter like that,” Taylor said of Hegge’s opening quarter.
“She scored 18 of their 20 points and was finding it easy to get to the basket.
“Then we changed to a zone defence and while it shut Amber down, it allowed other players to get into the game.”
Taylor said that despite a better second half, the Lady Broncos were well behind the Hawks on the night.
“We didn’t adjust well enough,” he said. “But we learnt a lot defensively and we know we need to try to get our own points on the board.”
Lady Broncos star Colleen Plantea was well held and scored only 17 points, only days after being named Golden Hands winner for averaging most points per game for the season.
“They had a quality defender in Emma Beddome guarding her and she did a good job,” Taylor said.
“I think we didn’t do enough to create opportunities for Colleen. We went away from what has worked all year.
“We need to find ways to get her into the game more and help her out more.”
Taylor admitted it would be a tough challenge to win the series, with the remaining two matches at the Hawks’ home court.
“It’s been done before to come from one game down and it will be a challenge for us to win on Saturday night,” he said.
“But if we can get the rotations right and have better shots we can defeat them.
“They deserve to be 1-0 up. Hopefully we can win the second game and take it into game three.”
