Hoops

WNBL Round 1

Williams certainly a strange omission. She was as good as I expected.

None of the five in team of the week look out of place but Courtney's +/- took quite a hit (-17 & was higher at 3QT despite team trailing just seven). So I wonder if that influenced the judges in the end?

Well, so much for my 3 "automatic" team of the week selections.
Somehow Courtney Williams missed out. WTF WNBL?
I know the Lynx lost, but she was awesome. I'm pretty sure the Flames coaches wouldn't argue because they were trying everything to slow her down. 12 boards from one of the smallest on the floor, along with 26 points and 4 assists.
Ripped off big time!!

This is the link to the wnbl stats

http://wnbl.com.au/stats/?WHurl=%2Fstatistics%2Fplayer%3F

Splitting it up like that is bad, the whole site design is terrible to look at and navigate.

Why they couldn't leave up what they did last season I have no idea, that actually functioned.

Got to be the worst frontline in the comp.

Standish/Thompson
Dowe/Burton

"Unfortunately there is only so many shots possible to take in one game, and it's doubtful Williams will share her portion with Whitcomb......last season it was Sammi taking well over half of the shots each game, with the rest of the team having to share the left overs, be interesting to see how it pans out now."

Pretty poor characterisation.
Whitcomb took less than 25% of the Lynx FGA last season.
Mijovic didn't take all that many fewer than Whitcomb, so that's already a lot of shots available for Williams.
Offence was not our problem today. In fact the way we're structured it's pretty important that plenty of players out there are able to score.
Need to fix up the D. Part of that was very obviously cohesion, and that is fixable. The other part was mismatches. That part is going to be interesting.

have foxtel and love the coverage - no easy games this season every game will be a contest.

"Williams was great for Perth in her debut. If that's a taste of things to come, watch out rest of league. Just need Sami firing too. Not sure why she had a bad game. Geez Perth's roster has no depth to it."

Unfortunately there is only so many shots possible to take in one game, and it's doubtful Williams will share her portion with Whitcomb......last season it was Sammi taking well over half of the shots each game, with the rest of the team having to share the left overs, be interesting to see how it pans out now.

Some brilliant individual performances this round. Pity I only go to see 2 of them.
Novosel, George & Williams all automatic "Team of the Week" selections. Wehrung, Hurst, Steph Blicavs, Hooper, Snell, Hamson, Taylor all in the mix for the other spots.

Perth Wilburs park at perry lakes its free :-p

I wonder what the next surprise new rule will be. Last season we had "the Perth Rule" where suddenly foreign pr's could suit up as locals. I guess it is Melbourne's turn next or would it be Bendigo if the rule keeps moving east?

Great first up use of "the Adelaide Rule" where a team is free to bring in an import for an injured aussie if the aussie injury is related to any form of national duties. how convenient that planetta just happened to be living in lightning housing and training with the lightning team well before clydesdale injury came to light.

Adelaide ain't that good imo. Not much coming off the bench.

Townsville looks good to me and they haven't added wiese in yet.

Wish they would finish the website and get it working properly before the season started.

Just got home from the Lynx game and it was bad. Some great moments but alot of bad. You can see that once everyone fires up then it'll be a finals capable team, but play like they did tonight and it's cellar dwellers.

Only one game so alot to improve upon.

Don't know how the crowd can fathom that tickets are $10 each and parking $10 too. That's a rip off. Lucky I parked early in the morning so escape the parking attendants.

Really bad result for Perth. Want it to be close at least especially at home. Sydney looking formidable considering they must be tired having played already this weekend. Snell still has it, amazing. Taylor is awesome.

Williams was great for Perth in her debut. If that's a taste of things to come, watch out rest of league. Just need Sami firing too. Not sure why she had a bad game. Geez Perth's roster has no depth to it.

I was happy enough with Fox's coverage. I don't really rate LJ as a commentator who is knowledgeable about the league, but she's extremely well known so fair enough. Production was good overall I thought.

Just got home from the Lynx game and it was pretty much as I expected. We will probably have some sizeable wins and also some sizeable losses this season. Sydney played it very smart and just picked our defence apart at will. We can score in bunches but unless we can stop opponents it isn't going to translate into many wins. Clearly a lack of cohesion today too, so hopefully both ends will run more smoothly after a couple more games together. That's something the Flames did not suffer from at all. They were impressive.
The Sami & Courtney backcourt was every bit as fun to watch as I had hoped, so I'll be entertained this season regardless of the results. Such a bugger about losing Toni Farnworth.

Good call above about the Caps. They're in very good hands with Hurst at the helm, and if Jarry can stay healthy then there's no reason they can't go places. If Wehrung keeps hitting at a solid clip then that's a very potent 1-2-3 with Hooper.

Most of it was good but I wasnt keen on the commentators. Little lackluster.

Did FOXs coverage meet everyones expectations? I thought it was pretty good, and an interesting contest between Boomers and Fire. It's a positive sign for the Fire that they could get the win off the back of players other than Suzy. For the Boomers I think depth is going to be the question for them but, Liz is going to be getting them so many wins this season, maybe depth won't come into it.

Caps are the team of the moment for mine. With Magbegor and Bass also in the squad I think they're getting the minutes right for Scherf. Great to see Jarry get through the double-header so well.

Flames resuming normal service against the Lynx earlier today means they split the round but since it's the dreaded western road trip you have to query whether they will suffer the normal 'hang-over' in next weeks game against Rangers when they apparently will be unfurling the Championship banner.

It doesn't matter what city you move to. no one is going to give you charity minutes you have to earn them

Why would Adelaide not hold onto all its players next season, most have signed for two years anyway?

As for Boomers not utilising Cambage, it was more a case of Cambage not able to,sustain anything, if all Boomers game is going to consist of is lobbing it into big Liz, they won't have much after the first five mins as that's basically all she has in the tank.
Nice to see Ohea looking better out n the crt, was beginning to think she had lost her touch, think she's hampered when Cambage is on the floor.

Canberra are doing a good job in the first two games, though Froling is barely playing and Sherfs on bench minutes. Thought moving to Canberra was to get a better share of crt time, not much use being a starter if your relegated back to the bench on less minutes than before.

Courtney doing what I expected. Absolutely killing it.

Teams + expansion

Vic-3
Nsw-1 (+1 Newcastle at Newcastle stadium)
Qld-1 (+1 Gold Coast at Carrara or Coomera stadium)
Sa-1
Wa-1
Act-1
Tas-0 (+1 Hobart at new Hobart stadium)
Nt-0
Nz-0 (+1 Auckland)

End up with a 12 team comp.

Newcastle will be 9th.

I'd say Gold Coast or Hobart for 10th team.

There's definitely talent in the league, but is there another viable city? I certainly wouldn't be going back to Brisbane in a hurry. What's next - Newcastle?

Well, the first game back on tv wasn't quite the blockbuster it could have been, with Cambage poorly utilised, Batkovic playing a shocker, and the Boomers generally looking quite out of sync and putting up a heap of bricks.
Cayla George more than did her bit though. Awesome game with 18 points & 21 boards.

Where will all this streaming of games come from? WNBL.tv ?

It seemed of no surprise Bendigo were cold last night after local press plus a twitter exchange I spotted both talked up Spirit's shooting prowess.

Potentially a 9 team comp next year..
enough talent in this country to fill another team?


Come back to wnbl?
Mitchell, Talbot, Allen, tolo, Bunton.

College girls coming home?
Wallace, froling, Reid, Turner, Edwards.

Have to laugh at the comments on Boomers Facebook page saying the officiating of Lizzie needs to be addressed as she was not getting any calls and was getting smashed on the crt.
She was pushing and shoving , giving as good if not more than she was receiving, she got the techs for her language and attitude.
Doesn't matter who you are or who you think you are , bad language towards officials will usually bring about a technical foul .

In my opinion wht you see is out of control egos of fundamentally bad people at Boomers. From Nelson to Molloy, Cambage to Conti - no surprises here in what is on show - sad for women's basketball"

Absolutely spot on here

In my opinion wht you see is out of control egos of fundamentally bad people at Boomers. From Nelson to Molloy, Cambage to Conti - no surprises here in what is on show - sad for women's basketball

M.conti due to apparently flopping when Sara bilicav ran into her in the charge circle after she just passed it, I think??
I believe it was an automatic tech as boomers had already been warned.

Who else got tech foul in that game

I wonder if Foxsports will be hoping she does act up?

At the game last night , Dandenong hasca terrible shooting game that's for sure, Cummings(now Blicavs) looked to not have her head in the game, made costly errors, and Lavey and Mijovic are just too slow for the Rangers usual run and gun game, they actually played better when both of those were sitting on the bench, hopefully for rangers sake they can improve their momentum but if they persist with Lavey running the point that speed it will be a long season.

Over heard Rangers have had several players out with injury basically most of their guards for the past couple of weeks Toddhunter was seen in a boot the day before, so also may explain the slow start.

On to Cambage, as a Boomers supporter I would be totally embarrassed by her behaviour, she was disgraceful, not so much in getting two tech fouls for basically spitting the dummy ( lots of players can loose it at times) but her behaviour as she was escorted out, waving to the crowd giving a "royal" wave, smiling laughing and shouting "bye" as she sauntered off while people were clapping her, thing is most were clapping because she was going NOT because she was there. She just did not give a dam.

Agree with Flow, Bommers have made a deal with the devil, she will do more harm than good with behaviour like that.

She returned to the crt after the game was finished announcing" is it ok I'm here" and laughing, think she expected to be stampeded with kids wanting autographs, every one just ignored her, and the kids were busy getting autographs and photos with the rangers and some of the other Boomers. She walked back out after a few mins
Reality check .........she's supposed to be a role model , someone kids can look up too and not just because she's tall, she's supposed to be the Boomers biggest attraction, the leader of their leadership group, well I hope they are getting their monies worth, because they lost a lot of respect that night from her behaviour from many areas.
Very sad when you think how hard Boomers have worked over the last 18months to get the Melbourne Boomers brand out there.

It's not a good look for WNBL that's for sure

In front of all those u14 kids?

Just how did Liz get ejected in her whole 15 minutes of projected playing time? LOL

Agree with the anon above - Nelson is a strange guy

Lavey 2 pts, 0 reds, 0 asts
Mijovic 0 pts, 6 rbds, 0 asts

Both 17 mins.

Wow, can't even start the season without dick swinging in the round thread.

No sign of a stream. Boomers absolutely dominating the Rangers. 46-33 atm

Cambage 11/4/1
Cole 7/4/1

Sa.Blicavs 13/1/0
St.Blicavs 7/4/5

Boomers seem to have appointed themselves as the leagues spokesman.... talk about "all about me" they really need to watch what they are saying though, some of the quips Nelson eludes too are not really appropriate , his name one about Sydney and Nicholson as a good example. It's not their place to pass on gossip.

Rangers possibly will stream it through their rangers TV like normal , but like most clubs they may be more keen to get bums on seats that pay for tickets than free viewing from your lounge room, with such a short season it's hard to judge what's best

By all means start a betting thread.

I liked the original Ranger Youtube streams without commentary, just the stadium sounds. Buy a coffee & chips from the Milkbar and it was just like being there.

BTW, is there a spot for betting discussion around here, otherwise can anyone recommend one (to participate, not to get tips)?

^ can someone fix the quoting, sorry thanks

by the way how about this for a scenario, how about the women get as much media attention and money thrown at them as the men and then perhaps they may generate enough revenue that you seem to perceive they dont at the moment.

Ok, go ahead women's game get "more media attention". *waits* It's just not as popular. Are you really that dumb?

Also Fox are showing WNBL due to taxpayer funds (government initiative re: women's sport) yet are getting NBL for free as LK is producing it and providing it to them (from his own pocket). OH NO HOW UNFAIR HOW ABOUT THE MEN ALSO GET TAXPAYER FUNDING FOR TV RIGHTS WAH WAH WAH. See what I did there?

It will depend on the TV agreement they have made, but frankly the fact they get just one game a week and the men get an entire season is pretty pathetic, it's like they have thrown them a token bone while the men get the meat and the carcass

Get back to use when the women's game actually generates enough revenue to make a profit, or not as much of a loss.

Or get your own LK.

Pathetic comments by you.

wow, get out of bed the wrong side mate lol

by the way how about this for a scenario, how about the women get as much media attention and money thrown at them as the men and then perhaps they may generate enough revenue that you seem to perceive they dont at the moment .

Ash Grant actually isn't a bad player, think she may be a very good pick for boomers, but yes SF shes no post player and not an inside player at all

listening to he podcast, seems its Liz Cambages injury to her Achilles thats still troubling her, yet she managed to play in China plenty of minutes, seems strange but perhaps its the stronger opponents that will make it tougher for her to move around. Big $ for someone whos not going to be mobile for them though. Maybe a career as DJ is where she should move too

It will depend on the TV agreement they have made, but frankly the fact they get just one game a week and the men get an entire season is pretty pathetic, it's like they have thrown them a token bone while the men get the meat and the carcass