Eagles take lessons even while winning

Image credit: Mark Filpo (@codexdesignstudio)

It's no surprise to learn that Tim Symons is a hard task master as coach of the East Perth Eagles women and he sees plenty of room for improvement after last week's win while he likes the way Sasha Goodlett has put the work in to be dominating like she is.

Symons is in his first season as coach at the Eagles having spent much of his adult life involved at East Perth in one form or another, and the improvement in the women's team has been obvious and immediate.

Following last Friday night's 93-75 win over the South West Slammers at Morley Sport and Recreation Centre, the Eagles improved to a 6-1 record after the opening eight rounds of the season and the lone loss was at the buzzer to the Warwick Senators.

Despite that, Symons is still looking for his team to continue to improve and there was plenty of takeaways from that win last Friday against the Slammers who admittedly are greatly improved in 2025 under the coaching of Mark Edman.

The Slammers were actually leading 42-39 at half-time which marked the first time the Eagles had been behind at the break all season, and it's fair to say Symons didn’t like how his team was performing.

They did come out and deliver 54 points to 33 in the second half, though, but it was a game that left him with plenty of things to want to work on heading into a double-header this week away to the Perth Redbacks on Friday and at home to the Goldfields Giants on Sunday.

"It's been a tough one to review because the whole focus going into the game was to make sure that we didn’t have to compete in the first two quarters," Symons said.

"In quarter one, we went OK but then in quarter two we just crapped an egg to go into the half-time behind I think for the first time this season. So that was a challenge for us, but as I said to the girls at half-time, we just had to forget that half and get into the third quarter and get going.

"There were some signs of that Cayla King had a night out for them after coming in with an average of 12 points. They also stayed in zone for 40 minutes and we had to get better at taking advantage of that, but what we also learned is that we don't want to be switching on defence.

"When we switch it takes the animal out of this team and when we didn’t switch in the last quarter we put the pedal down and started to laser point. We had 27 points in the fourth quarter to end up scoring over 90 points against a zone so the scoring wasn’t the issue," he added.

"It was the defensive end that was starting to lapse and we've done some resets on that. It was good to get away with the win but it wasn’t as well as it should have been even though Mark is doing a great job with making the Slammers much more competitive this year.

"We played a quarter of basketball to get the cookies so I don’t knock the win, but I'm not real happy about how we went about it."

One of Symons' key focuses when he took on the job as coach of the Lady Eagles was to have a strong inside presence to build the team around and he was delighted to discover that Sasha Goodlett was available.

She was coming to play in Australia for the first time but had been playing all over the world following a strong college career and then winning a WNBA championship.

However, she admitted herself that her confidence was shot coming off her most recent season with Hapoel Petah Tikva in Israel even if her numbers read well with Goodlett averaging 16.7 points and 9.1 rebounds in almost 36 minutes a game.

Symons could see a player upon arrival who needed to be rebuilt both physically and mentally, and just eight rounds into the season and it has certainly worked with her delivering 23.3 points, 9.4 rebounds and 3.0 assists on 64 per cent field goal shooting.

She is getting better all the time, though, including 33 points and 11 rebounds over the past two games with a best of 42 points, 14 boards and three steals two weeks ago against the Mandurah Magic.

Symons is pleased with the way Goodlett has quickly shaken off the tough state of mind she was in on arrival to now be providing the Eagles with such a dominant inside weapon.

"To be factual, I think Sasha came to us very unfit and she was averaging 36 minutes a game where she was playing with a double-double in a decent league," Symons said.

"But she went through some mental turmoil with that outfit she was tied up with where she went from being in the team, then getting released and then brought back in.

"That played with her mental health a fair bit and Sasha wanted to come here to put that behind her, but just being factual I thought she was going to have a heart attack the first time around because of the up and backs.

"But she's definitely got fitter and she is putting in the hard work, and that first 40-point game she had was no surprise," he added.

"We were forced to go inside and that's where we want to be because teams can double or triple team Sasha at their own peril.

"I don’t mind if they want to keep on doing that because I've got a lot of shooters around her and that gives me the ability to get us a great shot instead of a good one.

"Her averages are tight now, she's kicking at 64 per cent in the field goal percentage and it's pretty laser point with her rebounds starting to get there."