Silver Ferns wilt under Aussies’ pressure game
The Silver Ferns knew the response was coming − the only problem was they were powerless to do anything about it.
The world champion Australian Diamonds came out at Auckland’s Vector Arena in last night’s game three of the Constellation Cup series and quite simply snatched the initiative back with an aggressive and smart display.
The Diamonds’ 62-50 victory puts them 2-1 up in the series, with just Thursday’s series finale in Invercargill to come.
After suffering a surprise twogoal defeat in Launceston last Wednesday night, the Diamonds were always going to make some adjustments. They were subtle, but significant.
The Aussies zeroed their attack in on the towering 1.93m goalshoot Caitlin Bassett who was fed beautifully from classy midcourters Madi Robinson and Kim Ravaillion and had her way with the shorter Ferns defenders. Sure, she missed an unusually high nine shots, but her high-volume 64 attempts more than made up for that. It was 17 more shots at goal than Bassett had put up previously in the series.
‘‘They stepped up the pressure on us on the body and I don’t think we coped with that at times,’’ said Ferns coach Janine Southby afterwards. ‘‘That takes a bit of a toll as you go through a game. It’s a huge learning for all of them. They were letting the ball go in, and I think they had really improved their passing accuracy because they were pretty sloppy the other night.
‘‘There was certainly a change in their game. We saw it happening, we knew it was happening, but we didn’t put enough pressure on it. Right through the court we were guilty of not applying enough defensive pressure.’’
Anna Harrison battled hard on defence, but couldn’t replicate her disruptive effort from Launceston. Shannon Francois and Laura Langman were tireless around the midcourt and Te Paea Selby Rickit continued her impressive progress in the shooting circle. But for the most part the Ferns were just off the pace.
‘‘We had a really strong start which we haven’t done the first two games, but I was disappointed in the second, third and fourth quarters,’’ Southby said. ‘‘We let it fall away by two or three errors every quarter, and that became four goals against us in each of those quarters.
‘‘When we stuck to our gameplan it worked for us, but we got away from that and were also guilty of not enough movement to get them off our backs.’’
Diamonds coach Lisa Alexander said she ‘‘mostly’’ got the response she wanted.
‘‘The main thing was the fight and intensity we wanted to see. The Constellation Cup teaches all the players some great lessons about how to back up and that you can’t bring slightly less than your best because you’ll get punished by the other team.’’