SOME SBL men's and women's coaches shared their thoughts on how their respective opening weekends of the 2014 season went over the past weekend.

WOMEN'S
SCHWEIGEN EAST PERTH EAGLES
Coach – Conrad Francis

The Schweigen Lady Eagles started their 2014 Women’s State Basketball season last Friday night with a game against last year’s fourth place team, Lakeside Lightning.

We went into the game a little short on players with five of our top 10 either injured or unavailable due to other sporting commitments, one of these being our key off season signing Stephanie Jones who is still awaiting visa approval.

That being said we still fielded a very experienced team that was capable of getting the win.
The first half was typical of a season opener and a combination of nerves and early foul trouble saw us having to go to our bench earlier and use them longer then we would have liked.

As they say “Crisis creates opportunity” and with this Clare Thomson – Boston, another off season signing, came off the bench and gave us some much needed offence which saw us enter the half time break 13 points behind.

After a little half time inspiration, the girls hit the floor with some great energy and narrowed the gap to 9 pts by playing some great defence and successfully executing our offences. However again the refereeing wasn’t going our way on the night and it stifled our progress. We ended up losing to a very well drilled team by 21 points in the end.

Given the youth in the team some very exciting prospects were seen, Clare Thomson-Boston’s 23 pt effort off the bench was easily the highlight and combined with a reinvigorated Amy Chinnery (12 pts) they both carried the team in the absence of Steph Jones. Demi Urquhart also played very well ending up with 3 steals.

KALAMUNDA EASTERN SUNS
Coach – Craig Mansfield

It's always disappointing to lose but Cougars are going to be a strong team and it was our first hit out on the road. It showed some individual defensive areas we need to improve quickly if we want to be a competitive team this season.

The longer the game went on the stronger our performance was. We didn't shoot the ball or execute our new structures very well but settled in defensively and worked our way back into the contest.

MEN'S
PERRY LAKES HAWKS
Coach – Charles Nix

"It was a tough start to the season against a good team, Mullenax is always hard to contain but when you allow Daniel Thomas to shoot the ball at over 60% and score 38 points it's not often that you will win. They really made the right adjustments to how the referee's were calling the game and we didn't, committing 10 more fouls and sending them to the foul line for nearly double the attempts hurts"

COLLIE CRANE HIRE SOUTH WEST SLAMMERS
Coach – Ty Harrelson

Saturday night we played a great team game jumping out to a 30 point halftime lead with 18 assists and just six turnovers against Goldfields Giants. Clive Weeden and Lee Smith proved dominant inside going for a combined 18-21 from the field and grabbing 15 rebounds in limited minutes.

Our guards were able to put pressure on the Giants and wore them down as the game went on, holding them to 30% shooting for the game. Todd Hendley scored 20 points and grabbed 8 rebounds in 18 minutes in his SBL debut. By the end of the game all players had scored as we pulled out a 127-88 victory over our country rivals.