ALBURY-Wodonga Lady Bandits coach James Ballinger has lamented yesterday’s fighting road defeat to the Ballarat Rush as “definitely one that got away”.
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The Border club gave the more fancied Rush a real scare for the best part of three quarters before going down 76-63.
Leading 49-46 going into the final period, it wasn’t until the final four minutes the Rush were able to close out the pesky visitors.
The defeat leaves the Lady Bandits without a win in its SEABL campaign but Ballinger said he was trying to take the positives away from the club’s second-closest loss this season.
“There’s some good lessons to be learned here; that’s the first time we’ve truly been competitive and playing with a lead this whole year,” Ballinger said.
“I think for the whole season before this game, we’d had the lead for less than four minutes for the year and today we had the lead for more than 17 minutes, so for us that’s a big thing.”
Import guard Lonnika Thompson led the way for the Lady Bandits with 23 points and five assists and fellow playmaker Tenille Collins added 11 points.
Forward Rachel Maenpaa battled foul trouble to score 10 points and grab nine boards while Maddy Plunkett endured a decidedly sub-par 4-16 shooting performance to also score 10 points.
Ballinger said he was pleased his team was able to heed his message following Friday’s abysmal display against Canberra.
“I think we were definitely the better team for three quarters,” Ballinger said.
“And Ballarat acknowledged that too; Rachel getting in foul trouble hurt us rotation-wise.
“But it was a great learning experience and we’ll learn now how to win those games. The message after Friday was pretty simple really, hard work equals success.
“From success you have fun and the past two weeks it looked like we hadn’t had as much fun playing the game.
“But today we shot the ball at 41 per cent, which is phenomenal for us, so that showed the level we can play at.
“Our preparation was much better and we came out from the get-go and gave it a crack.”