Glasgow Storm Basketball Club
Glasgow Storm Ladies Lightning 61-59 Glasgow City
| Date: | Thu 19/11/2009 7.15 |
| Venue: | Eastbank (Away) |
| Table Officials: |
Match Report
Storm Lightning travelled through the terrible weather to St Mungos to play a very talented and fast Glasgow City team. The home team showed their impressive shooting ability right away and hurt us from mid range and beyond the 3 point line for the whole 40 minutes, but storm were aggressive and made some layups to end the quarter only down 1, at 10-11.
The second quarter saw both teams getting out and running , making for a higher scoring quarter, but nothing could split the teams, the quarter was tied 20-20, but we were not happy with our defense due to City hitting 4 three pointers in the quarter!
After a talk at half time, Storm came out more focused and determined to keep our unbeaten record alive, and began playing better pressure defense, but City continued to shoot well, and now added some offensive rebounds and layups to their advantage, however Storm worked extra hard on defense and get some steals and conversions, and won the quarter 17-14.
The final quarter was bound to be a cracker, as both teams showed heart and desire to try to win the game. City went on a big run to start the quarter and found themselves up 8 with exactly 7 minutes to go! Storm had 3 timeouts left so took them in good space to enable some rest for players to regroup and remember what had kept us in the game! As we came out trading buckets we realised it was not enough, so after another time out, we increased the defensive intensity and made some really tough layups in transition and held off City for the tight win by 2 points! (Qr tied at 14-14)
From a coaching point of view i cannot say enough about the heart of the team tonight, they showed great determination and teamwork to get the hard fought win, but credit to City for showing off the impressive shooting from everyone, and making it the toughest game so far this year!
Dot Souter made the game tonight and gave invaluable hustle minutes despite suffering from food poisoning the whole day, Jill Pytko also deserves a special mention tonight for canceling a holiday to play the game but Rhona Mitchell had her best game of the season by far, showing a radical change in aggression, taking it to the basket strong and drawing numerous fouls, picking up rebounds and overall giving a strong contributing performance!
Storms backcourt of Suzanne Burns, Kirsty Semple and Alicia McFadden all kept up the impressive defensive effort that has no doubt contributed largely to the 4 wins so far, putting their bodies on the line for the team in order to hold their best players to lower points than usual, and overall working their tails off for the good of the team! Semple also added 14 points including some free throws and tough layups down the stretch, but overall the scoring was very balanced for Storm which is perfect for the team concept!
Great support on and off the bench from Katie Drain and Slavica who kept the team going, Slav maintained her warrant of a double team, allowing many of our players to take offensive responsibility playing 4 on 3! and Katie Drain kept her unselfish contribution to the team by giving good minutes off the bench and being supportive of the starters!
Again huge credit to the Lightning ladies who have worked so hard through injury troubles to make this team work and thoroughly deserve to be 4-0! Good job :)
