Mr White
Years ago
No Phillips No Lightning?
The Canberra Capitals proved a midseason "hiccup" was just that tonight as they turned around a disappointing weekend away in Melbourne to outplay league leaders Adelaide Lightning.
The Capitals made an undermanned Lightning look like premiership pretenders as they scored an ugly yet convincing 81-54 victory to keep their perfect record at home intact.
The Capitals, who surrendered the top spot with two losses last round, proved their title defence was back on track as they made mistakes in defence and poor shooting precentages a thing of the past.
Captain Kellie Abrams and Jess Bibby got the Capitals off to a strong start in the first quarter and a good defensive effort lead by Donna Loffhagen laid the foundation for a convincing win.
Capitals coach Carrie Graf said she was happy to come away with the win but there was still plenty of improvement left in the team.
"It's good to get the win but that's got to be one of the ugliest games of basketball I've seen, I question whether we got better today but, hey, we'll take a win over Adelaide any day," she said.
"We had to get this one, that was an absolute must, to level up the series with Adelaide and we've got a chance to level up the series with Sydney and go into Christmas in a good position."
Adelaide, who came to Canberra for the first time in a year, stuggled without Opals star Erin Phillips and WNBA recruit Kristen Rasmussen, both out though injury, but coach Chris Lucas refused to blame the absence of his two starting players on the loss.
"I don't want to use excuses of players being out, everybody has injuries and you just have to deal with it but all credit to Canberra they played well tonight, they were obviously stinging from last weekend," he said.
"They took us out of our sync offensively, defensively they were pretty solid all over the floor and Kellie Abrams and Jess Bibby were sensational in the first half and sometimes that's just the way it goes."
Tracey Beatty won the tip-off against Adelaide's Rebecca Duke to get the repeat of last season's tense preliminary final started.
The signs looked ominous early for the Capitals, who struggled to convert shots at goal in their Melbourne doube-header last week, and some missed attempts from Bibby and Bishop gave the Lightning a 4-0 lead.
But Abrams shot her first of two succesful three-points for the quarter to close the gap and the Capitals stepped up their offence and accuracy to steal a 14-8 lead with five minutes gone on the clock.
Abrams and Bibby continued to trouble Adelaide's defence to finish the quarter with 12 and 11 points respectively and help the Capitals to a 12-point advantage at the first break.
New Zealand recruit Donna Loffhagen was persistent in defence for the Capitals, forcing a lacklustre Adelaide into turnovers and stealing posession for her new team.
The Capitals continued to extend their lead in the second quarter. Bevilaqua and Bishop both scored their first points of the match while at the other end of the court Adelaide struggled to overcome some tight defence from the Capitals.
The Lightning finished the first half with 29.7 per cent of field goals counting and trailing 53-31.
Comparatively, the Capitals had 50 per cent from the field and converted nine of their 13 shots from the perimetre, a marked improvement from last week's matches, in which they had little more than 20 per cent at the half-time break.
Not much separated the sides in rebounds, a good sign for Canberra coming up against arguably the league's best side in that aspect.
It was a slow start to the third quarter as both sides stepped up their defensive pressure.
Adelaide got its first points of the quarter with nearly four minutes gone when it was awarded a free throw and it finished the quarter with just eight points.
The Capitals had the luxury of playing their bench for most of the third quarter and still managed to extend their lead to 67-39.
Adelaide began to make inroads in the first half of the final quarter and scored its first three-points of the game to close a 30-point deficit to 26, but it was not enough to unsettle the Capitals, who held on for a 81-54 win.
At A Glance
Canberra Capitals 81 (Kellie Abrams 15, Jess Bibby 15, Tracey Beatty 13) bt Adelaide Lightning 54 (Tracy Gahan 14, Jessica Foley 14, Sam Woosnam 8). Crowd: 850
By Julia Whyte for WNBL.com.au
