National Finals | Knox strengthen favourites tag

Featured image: Tia De Santis | @tia.desantis

The Knox Raiders continued their dominant form that took them to the NBL1 South championship and deserves to have them raging favourites to go back-to-back at the NBL1 National Finals with the 82-55 win over the Sturt Sabres.

Coming winning the NBL1 South and National Finals championships last year, Knox went through to have another standout season in the South to romp to back-to-back titles last Saturday night with the Grand Final win over the Waverley Falcons.

Then with all their guns arriving in Adelaide this weekend for the National Finals, they deserved to come into it as the raging favourites and the Sabres were up against it.

Sturt had a stirring Grand Final win two weeks earlier to beat the West Adelaide Bearcats and finally breakthrough having lost three of the last four NBL1 Central Grand Finals, but their task wasn’t helped with the absence of superstar Tayla Brazel.

Knox did get the better of the start to be leading 22-18 by quarter-time with Paige Bradley up to 10 points already while Alicia Froling had seven to go with six rebounds.

The Raiders pulled down 10 offensive rebounds and as a result got up an extra eight shots so from that regard, the Sabres did well to be only down four.

>> SOUTH GRAND FINAL | RAIDERS EMPHATICALLY GO BACK-TO-BACK

>> CENTRAL GRAND FINAL | SABRES FINALLY GET CHAMPIONSHIP GLORY

>> MATHEWS, SABRES TAKE DIRECTION FROM THE PAST

Knox then blew the game apart in the second frame with 27 points to 11 on the back of shooting 9/17 from the field with 3/6 from downtown and 6/7 at the foul line with the Sabres only managing 5/24 shooting including 1/9 from the outside and zero free-throw attempts.

That saw the Raiders go into half-time leading 49-29 with Bradley already having 20 points with Froling up to 12 and eight rebounds with Paige Padroth battling hard for Sturt with eight points.

The lead for the Raiders did get out to 27 points in the third quarter and that's where it would remain by the final buzzer with Knox getting up an extra five shots and seven free throws than Sturt on the back of 22 offensive rebounds to 10.

Paige Bradley was Grand Final MVP in the NBL1 South last Saturday night and kept that form going with another 22 points, five rebounds and three assists with 4/5 shooting from the outside.

Paige Burrows added 14 points and two assists, Haliegh Reinoehl 18 points, nine rebounds and two steals, Alicia Froling 12 points, 12 boards and four assists, Leah Santomaggio eight points, eight rebounds, four assists, two steals and two blocks, and Agnes Emma-Nnopu four points, 14 rebounds and three assists.

Paige Padroth had a big game in 28 minutes off the bench for Sturt with 23 points, four steals and three rebounds with 11/18 field goal shooting.

Grand Final MVP Nicola Mathews also had seven points and five assists, Liz Williamson six points, five rebounds and three blocks, and Katia Stamatelopoulos six points, five boards and three assists.

NBL1 NATIONALS FINALS 2026 | DAY 1

KNOX RAIDERS 82 (Bradley 22, Reinoehl 18, Burrows 14)

STURT SABRES 55 (Padroth 23, Mathews 7, Stamatelopoulos 6, Williamson 6)