Hoops

WNBL Round 4

Not only Phoenix's commentating crew.

Early on.. I like.

Mitchell/Mansfield
Ebzery/Cumming/Wallace
Allen/Talbot
Blicavs/George/Smith
Cambage/Tolo


Maybe time to move on from..
Batkovic, Snell, Hodges, Phillips, Hurst

Out of opals action for some time...
Bishop, Ohea

A step behind...
Lavey, Garrick, Cole, Kunek, Jarry

Might need a chance..
Bunton, Mijovic, Wilson, Seekamp, Wehrung

Just because you play in the best league (WNBA) doesn't make you a better player than those who play somewhere else.

A few players better than Talbot and Allen in the wnbl currently.

Currie and Turner (the highly credentialled 29yo) took over her starting spot but they were quite happy trusting Talbot with good minutes to the end of the regular season.

Sorry but college games are no measure for how a player would handle a senior game, Wallace is way off being ready

Wallace looked good today apart from a couple of turnovers.

Terrible opposition though.

Talbot's WNBA minutes only subsided come playoff time, obviously because the plan of attack was to go with experience but Brondello said herself they were still keen to use her - 14:47 in final playoff 2pt loss to LA. She actually had an impressive rookie year. Commentators often applauded her for the way she defended some excellent players plus other aspects of her game showed she belonged out there.

Allen struggles to guard even one position in the WNBA unfortunately. I thought Talbot did a passable job, with her hustle factor partly compensating for her lack of quickness, but yes she ultimately found her minutes declining too.

Really though, we're talking about Opals basketball here, and comparing players with WNBA starters is a bit pointless because if that's the standard then our team will have a point guard, a centre, and no other players. Just maintaining a place on a WNBA roster is something to be applauded, and being constantly measured against the best is a great way of facilitating improvement, so well done to both of them.

I wouldn't say Steph is quick, but she's strong, has good defensive instincts, and puts real effort into her D. As a result I'd say she's probably our best backcourt defender. Speed isn't everything.

There's someone here who for years has been naming small forwards as their Opals 2-guards. I don't get why they always want someone who can't reliably handle the ball and/or can't keep up with opposing guards at that position. It's a fun Opals thread tradition though.

Steph Blicavs... not Sara.

Blicavs slow...on what planet lol, shes one of the fastest mobile 3/4 Australia has right now, shes a bit out of control at times but shes certainly never slow.
Same as her new sister in-law Steph Blicavs nee Cummings, who on earth would say shes slow, she may not be lightening quick, but slow is not a word to use to describe her. Ebzery runs hot and cold to often, think Garrick and Cummings would be the better choices at the two
Forget Tupaea if your looking for speed, shes always been too slow and will only get slower the older and bigger she gets. Wherung can be very injury prone and needs way more work on her ball handling, but one for the future.

Mitchel would still be the main pick for PG, and Id take Griffin over Whitcomb anyday.

George should not be over looked, but Snell is done, so too Batkovic if they are being honest, have'nt seen Allen play for a while, and O'Hea whilst shes doing OK at boomers when Liz is off the crt, looks like shes run her race for national selection. Time for a literal changing of the guards . Lavey and Burton were out of their league last time and still show little promise now, it was Joyce who pushed them into those positions,and who on earth suggested Alex Wilson!?
But if Brondello doesnt actually start to take this serious, then goodness only knows what the next OPALS team will look like.

She's slow...

Like ingles is slow... but he's a great defender. Iq helps a lot.

Steph Blicavs' reputation as an elite defender is due to her ability to guard 1 through 3, in part because she has the speed to stay with PGs.

I dont think I've ever heard of anyone refer to her as being slow.

Allen is not a sg.

A slow lanky sf who is a good 3 pt shooter but is incredible slow, slower than all of those previously mentioned.

Cannot handle the ball, can't penetrate...

Same goes for Talbot, a sf who is primarily a specialist defender.

We've already qualified for next years worlds...

no one at sg is up to scratch.
Cumming and ebzery are the other 2 that would be in the team but both are also slow.

Garrick, Cole etc aren't showing much.
Seekamp another slow guard.
Wehrung/Tupaea still pretty young, maybe a while before we see them.

you could take Whitcomb, but then you lose Griffin.


Not much to choose from in the guard positions.

is that alex wilson? at 2 guard? that would be the slowest team ever assembled

I'd like to see a starting 5 of...

Wallace
Wilson
Blicavs
Griffin
Cambage

Personally I'd cut anyone over 30y.o
No more Mitchell, ohea, Snell, Batkovic etc etc.

No more chances for Lavey, Burton etc.

We need to start a fresh.

agree totally Melb fan, its time these older ones moved over and let the others have a go, but frankly with an absentee coach whos not even going to be present for selection unless its in the USA again and has already said Commonwealth Games are a no go for her,I can see the team being filled with geriatrics of the game as she does not know any of the younger ones, and she wont know them sitting in the USA .

I agree in general with the philosophy of looking to the future now, but I'd happily make an exception for Snelly after the way she was tossed aside by Joyce on the eve of Rio. I think she deserves a proper farewell in the green & gold.

...seems crows captain , erin phillips wants to play commonwealth games , last nite on ninenews...

Yep, I love how the muppets defending her call us the muppets. No self awareness at all!

Ok but maybe she's not motivated to watch the games.

You're the muppet. She has basically no access to the league. Fans in Australia can't even watch the games. Muppet.

ÍF she wanted too'is the point

Every single game is taped by each club and shared. Of course she could watch each and every game if she wanted to.

is Batkovic going to play worlds next year?

She was going to watch all the games via stream. Oops.

^haha you jest surely......

Rangers were indeed lucky to get that win, the refs did everything in their power to get them to loose, absolutely shocking calls ( or lack of) by the female ref today, so many travels by Taylor not called, over the back by Harmon totally ignored, flops by Taylor ignored, so yes they were lucky to get the win .

I reckon her team going 2-0 gives Batkovic the tie-breaker over Taylor for POTW.
Whitcomb an easy inclusion in the TOTW, with Bishop, Novosel & Steph Blicavs fighting over the other 2 spots.

Wilson doesn't look far off a Snr opals spot.

The other opals sgs are not looking too good atm.

For 3 quarters I was marvelling at how well drilled the Flames are. It's pretty much what kept them in that game, with Asia's heroics then pushing them to the lead.
Which they then choked away quite uncharacteristically in the 4th.
Rangers can count themselves lucky to escape with that win I reckon.

"Perth trying to rush paperwork for Alison Schwagmeyer to play tonight as IR for Williams. SBL MVP who's in the process of trying to be naturalised (the long way it seems, not the Lightning way)."

zConsidering Planeta played Big V in 2014 (and 2015)- one year after Whitcomb and got her PR last year, I don't see your point about your last comment.

There's no shame in losing in Townsville. Happens to everyone. O'Hea is a massive loss for Melbourne.

"Hate to say it but women's sport has leaps and bounds to improve and social issues like pay won’t imprive until teams can produce better than 27 and 24 points in a half"

Boomers struggling now so it's a bit unfair to paint the league with their brush. Totals of 56 & 57 this round obviously aren't pretty though, can't argue with that. Blessed that my team had 66 at half time a week ago, and play a very watchable style.


I probably should have changed my tip to the Rangers when Ebzery went down. Anyone's depth would be tested by losing Tupaea and then Ebzery. Sydney doing pretty well under the circumstances but it feels to me like they're about to get overrun.

Boomers lose. Molloy our coached.

Guy behind the camera for Sydney vs Dandenong game...

My goodness, must be his/her first time.

Wait what? She's blaming a rapper?

Fair enough if you're just basing it on the stats.
Sami has acknowledged her slowish start to the season, but looked very much like her usual self last night.

Regarding Courtney's offensive game, yes, it is extremely mid-range-based. Her 3 is not reliable, and being tiny means she doesn't get to the basket much, but she has one of the sweetest mid range jumpers in womens basketball. She can pull up & elevate in an instant, and shoot accurately, so "dead zone" does not apply to her.

Schwagmeyer pretty much played Williams's role - did some ball handling, tried to get into seams and create, put up plenty of shots (just 1 less than Sami), put a lot of effort into her defence, etc. So I don't think anything about last night's game backs the theory.

You can still put forward the theory of course. I disagree with it though. They're both high usage, yes. They're also both unselfish, more than hold their own as defenders despite their size, and they've never given me the feeling of "there aren't enough basketballs to go around". Whitcomb is noticeably more selective with shooting so far this season.
So I still think the front court is where Perth wins or loses games. Dandenong tried to exploit their size advantage, and did ok, but just ok. Meanwhile we had Kunek & Standish hitting long jumpers, and even created 11 points for Burton.
Rangers pretty much broke even with us in the front court last night IMO, and that's not usually going to cut it.

Sydney clinically picked us apart inside, and when Bendigo smashed us most of those good outside looks started with Griffin & Laney.

What aspect of Williams' game do you see as a negative?

I still have faith that Andy will find a role for her though. We're not a deep team so he pretty much needs to. But I don't expect her to be a big scorer with this team. If you're not hitting outside shots or a good slasher (or a Courtney Williams who can pretty much get a shot up at will) then you've not going to score much in our offence. It's going to be very rare that one of our front court players has a size advantage on anyone this season.

LiveStats rarely had an issue before they changed it from last season. Plus, as I encouraged them to do, rather than trying to make it look funky, there was 10+ lines of Play by Play on my screen rather than just the half dozen now.

I remember Thompson along with Blicavs were scoring machines for team AIS, so it's a shame she hasn't kicked on.

Steph was great. Sami even greater.

I know the Rangers can be flaky at times, but even with that in mind I had no hesitation in changing my tip to them once I heard the Courtney news (she sounded confident of being back pretty quickly btw). Very happy to be wrong. Was a good contest from start to finish.

Thompson is just struggling - at both ends. No injury that I'm aware of. And Standish & Kunek are both playing pretty well.

Ruth finishes with 15 points, 17 boards & 3 blocks
Seems like that back isn't feeling too bad

Herrick! That makes more sense

Yeah I would have thought so too. Surprising.

Flames doing a great job of frustrating Liz so far.

Oh, but she'd be watching the Caps game?

Ta, I was trying to think of retired players.

Taipans-Sixers is on.