Central Highlands Water Ballarat Miners Rush Youth Weekly Review Round 19

The Central Highlands Water Ballarat Miners Rush Youth Weekly Review by Head Coaches.

On Sunday 1st of August the Central Highlands Water Ballarat Miners Youth team hosted the Kilsyth Cobras at a crowd-less Minerdome. This was a key game for us as we were 5th and Kilsyth were 4th on the ladder, but 1 win ahead of us. If we had of lost this game we would have been out of finals contention. So this was a finals like game for us without it being finals yet, which was a great learning opportunity and experience.
Without a crowd we knew we would need bench energy and noise and it proved to be true, Kilsyth got out of the blocks and their bench was up and about, as they got out to a quick double digit lead. We burned an early timeout to settle ourselves as we were generating good looks within the structure of our offence, but they weren't falling so we focused on improving the defensive side of the ball. This started to pay off as we chipped into their lead, but still trailed 12-23 at quarter time.
The 2nd quarter is where the momentum started to shift and we can attribute that to some key performances and minutes from our bench, Stepho Economou brought an energy and gut running effort that helped turn the tide and we almost got back level, a few late buckets by Kilsyth though meant we still trailed at the half 30-38m but we had won the quarter.
The focus as halftime was to limit Oboards and turnovers so we weren't giving away to many easy points. The 2nd half ended up being one of our best for the season, we limited Kilsyth to 29 points for the 2nd half, whilst we went on to score 45 points, we had a 17-0 run from late into the 3rd into the 4th that was key to us pulling away and winning 75-67.
The positives from the game were the impact the bench provided they scored 25 points and also had some of the better +/- of the game. Our record is now 10-10 and with our final 2 games this weekend, @ Keilor on Sat night and home on Sunday we have our destiny in our own hands still, which is very exciting position for our club. Go Miners!

The Central Highlands Water Ballarat Rush hosted Nunawading at the Minerdome on Sunday. It was great to just be on the court again after missing a few weeks due to the extended lockdown period. This battle against Nunawading was always going to be tough since they are the top team in the league. While missing our NBL1 players, this meant more opportunity and court time to our players. They managed to get off to a very quick start until we pulled the gap back to only trail by 2 at the first break. They managed to pull away again in the second quarter, so we were down 32-40 at the main break, similar story in the third quarter as the score went to 44-59. Never giving up, the girls fought back in the last quarter for the final score to be 69-77. We had an even scoring effort across the board as Jemma, Milly, Laila and Layla all scored double digits in this game. Go Rush!!