Wallan Panthers Women used its break wisely in the Big V competition, returning to the competition with a bang under Division Two against Coburg on Sunday.
Round 13 was the beginning of Division Two for both sides after taking on all teams before the Division One/Two split, but the first game back was a nailbiter.
Wallan was missing import Kylah Collins, their ultimate scorer, which put a big test for the Panthers, but Wallan made the difference and pushed through all four quarters.
The Panthers started with a thrill, concluding the first quarter with 20 points after Wallan’s Olivia Sweet gained two freethrows within the remaining minutes.
The defence for Wallan slowly drifted off within the next few plays, almost giving Coburg the game, however a few adjustments still put Wallan in the lead, with the Giants not far off on the scoring side.
But the fourth quarter was the ultimate throwdown between the sides.
Coaches and supporters at the Jungle were not prepared for the final minutes.
Twenty seconds down on the clock, the Giants were up by one point until the referee called a foul, which placed Wallan Captain Olivia Dalmau at the freethrow line.
The opportunity to win was in that final moment under Dalmau’s hands.
Dalmau delivered the win, securing both freethrows for Wallan to take the one-point lead.
Coburg was desperate to take over within the final two seconds, but after a missed two-point layup and impressive defence from Wallan, the Panthers kept hold of its triumph until the final buzzer.
Coach Jarrod Bridge said it was a nerve-racking match.
“We played good enough to win but we got lucky,” he said.
“We got lucky for half of it, and the other half was in our last sort of two or three defensive plays, the girls really stepped up, they played really good basketball without fouling.”
Olivia Dalmau almost concluded the game with a triple double, but had another fantastic game, including her sister Abby Dalmau, who demonstrated good basketball aggression on the day.
Molly Young was also praised with her rebound efforts among the players.
Wallan will host another home game this Sunday against Surf Coast who were missing their point guard player last time, but Wallan is on the eye out for her return to make another win.
“We’re going to put a big emphasis on defence, we let ourselves down a little bit, letting Coburg get back into the game too easily, so we are going to have to fix that a little bit,” Bridge said.
“We are going to kind of focus on a little bit more ball movement, trying to make sure that the ball doesn’t stay for too long.”
Men
After the Women’s match, Wallan’s Division Two Men went to play, but unfortunately it was not a good basketball day for the side.
Wallan indeed felt the heat from Mildura, who swept up a 44-point win, including another win against Surf Coast the night before, but only by seven points.
It seems Mildura was still able to deliver the next day considering Wallan was aiming to score, but baskets were not going through.
Although Mildura was in the zone, already up by 39 points at the start of the third quarter, Wallan put 19 points onto the scoreboard, but Mildura was too far ahead and embraced the 59-103 win.
Coach Travis Heal said the effort was there from Wallan, but the execution let the side down.
“We just couldn’t hit a basket, we shot the ball poorly and probably didn’t take the best shots, but the night before, Mildura was four of 26 from the three-point line, and against us they shot over 50 per cent, so they couldn’t miss,” he said.
“At one stage, [Mildura] they were nine of 12 one stage from the three-point line, so they just couldn’t miss, we couldn’t hit.
“I think sometimes you got to put a line through the game and say, ‘forget about that one, why don’t we move forward?’ – we just shot the ball poorly, there’s so many open looks that we would normally make, and we just didn’t.”
Wallan Men will play again at home against Surf Coast in round 14.
“We won’t change too much … and the last few weeks have been really, really positive, so we just had a bad shooting game, but eventually we’ll come out and we’ll play hard, make them [our opponent] shoot the ball worse,” Heal said.
