BATHURST Goldminers came agonisingly close to women’s State League Basketball division one glory on Sunday as they went down to the Wagga Blaze in a closely fought grand final.
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It was the finale the competition deserved as the squads who finished one-two on the ladder came together at Terrigal, and it was there minor premiers Blaze eventually ran away late with the game to record a 74-66 win.
The two sides came together for the third time this season, after splitting the wins between themselves, and in the most important contest to date it was the Blaze who got off the mark quickest.
Blaze took a 41-30 lead into half-time and Goldminers struggled to eat into that margin until the final quarter, where they kept Wagga on their toes.
Goldminers brought themselves back level with Wagga at one stage during the fourth quarter before the Blaze put the foot down late to seal the title.
Foul trouble also caused the Goldminers to tread cautiously towards the closing stages of the match, with Chelsea Noon, Laycee Covington-Gorst and Rachel Murray all finishing with four personal fouls.
The match brought together the two most prolific scorers in the competition, Wagga’s Saadia Doyle (29.6 points per game) and Bathurst’s Teagan Burke (28.9), and they both made big contributions in the decider.
Doyle sunk a match-high 37 points while Burke hit five three-pointers on her way to 29.
“Their important player [Doyle] decided she’d have her best game of the season in the grand final. She couldn’t miss and we found her very hard to contain,” Goldminers coach Jo Cafe said.
“We were our own worst enemies. Our finishing let us down and … they rebounded much better than us.
“We’d claw our way back then they would get a couple of baskets to get the edge on us again. We were always playing catch-up basketball.
“We couldn’t get many baskets in transition either. They did a very good job at preventing that.”
Murray (16) and Noon (8) were the top scorers for the Goldminers after Burke.
On the previous day the Goldminers earned their way into the decider thanks to a 72-62 win over the Maitland Mustangs.
After losing their two previous meetings with the Mustangs it was a satisfying opponent to overcome for the Goldminers on their way to the grand final.
Cafe said it set her team up well for Sunday’s final, where her side gave it their all.
“The semi-final was a really tough game against a big, strong and mature team. It was a physical game and we wanted to take a lot from that into the Sunday match,” she said.
“I don’t think we really played that badly in the final. Wagga are a great team. They only lost one game all year, and that was to us.”