AMERICAN DREAM
Lady Supercats look global to cover Blicavs, Bunton blows
GEELONG Lady Supercats will explore importing some American talls to help cover the injuries of Australian Opals Sara Blicavs and Alex Bunton.
The reigning SEABL champions will be forced to reconstruct their list, with Blicavs and Bunton both likely to miss the upcoming campaign with knee injuries.
Blicavs tore her anterior cruciate ligament in November and has been ruled out of playing basketball in 2018, while Bunton has had fresh surgery on her knee to remove a cyst.
Their unavailability follows the departures of fellow talls Chantel Horvat to American college basketball and Agnes Emma-Nnopu to Basketball Australia’s Centre of Excellence.
“That’s four of our tallest players out of the roster for this year, so right now we’re guard heavy and we’re trying to make sure we can find some bigs at the moment,” Supercats chief executive Dean Anglin said.
“There’s a chance it may mean we have to bring some American imports into our women’s program, just to make sure we don’t go from being champions of the competition to missing the finals, purely through (lack of) depth.
“Alex Bunton is still a slight unknown. She had surgery around Christmas to remove a cyst on her knee. That cyst had been causing her some dramas and the belief is that may have led to some of her previous injuries. That’s been cleaned up and she’s recovering well, but we’re just not quite sure if she’s going to make it to the season or not.”
Anglin said the majority of the side has been retained with Isabella and Charlotte Brancatisano, Alex Duck, Ellen Kett, Ebony and Tiarna Rolph and Eve Braslis to carry most of the load.
But Anglin described Blicavs as extremely difficult to replace.
“Replacing Sara Blicavs is just not going to happen overnight,” he said.
“There are not too many players running around like her in Australian basketball at the moment.
“We obviously didn’t have Bunts or Chantel going into the finals and we were able to counter that, but if you take Sara out of that team, all of a sudden it’s a far more difficult task.”