North Herts Knights Women (44) vs MK Breakers Women (71)
After the long Christmas break, the MK women got straight back to work when they travelled to the Pendleton Sports Centre to play the North Herts Knights. There were very few signs of any Christmas excesses as the team cruised to a 71-44 victory.
In the pre-game team talk, Coach Round wanted the players to focus on high quality defence and the message was received loud and clear. The man-to-man defence held North Herts to 10, 6 and 8 points in the first three quarters. At the other end of the floor, MK were ready for the Knights 1-2-2 zone, which they played for all 40 minutes. Work done in training, which included the introduction of a new zone offence, proved fruitful as MK created great scoring opportunities.
In the first quarter, a mixture of intelligent interior play and long-range shooting helped the team to a ten point lead (10-20). The great spacing, player movement and passing continued through the second quarter, although the shooting percentage dipped slightly. MK only managed 12 points in the period, but that still gave them a 16-32 half-time lead. Normal service was resumed in third quarter as MK’s relentless fast-breaking resulted in numerous scores and the half court sets worked well.
With the score showing 53-24 in MK’s favour going into the final phase, the Breakers took the opportunity to experiment with a zone defence of their own. Whilst this resulted in numerous steals and fast break scores, it gave North Herts some open looks from outside the three-point arc which they successfully converted. Both teams had their best scoring quarters in the fourth period with North Herts netting 17, but this was still 7 points shy of MK’s quarter score of 24 points.
Commenting on the team’s performance after the game, Coach Round said, “What was most pleasing was the fact that all of the players contributed to the team’s total.” Courtney Gray, Lauren Dabbs, Jess Lee and Vanessa Obanor all reached double figures scoring 12, 12, 11 and 10 points respectively, and Tetiana Shevchyk (9 points) and Sarah Round (8 points) were one basket away from joining them. Coach Round added, “In this game, we showed we can play well as a team at both ends of the floor. The challenge now is to maintain that standard for the remainder of the season.”