THE Bathurst Goldminers made it four wins from their last five Youth League division two outings on Saturday night when downing the Hornsby Spiders 96-78.
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Playing in front of a vocal crowd at the Bathurst Indoor Stadium, the Goldminers potted the first basket of the contest and from there never trailed.
It was an important result as it not only kept the Goldminers ahead of the Spiders on the competition ladder and prevented them slipping to 11th, but it builds on the momentum the Bathurst outfit has enjoyed of late.
“It was a performance I guess that we needed against a side of that quality,” coach Andrew Osborn said.
“We got away to the start that we had to get away to.
“We led the whole game, it panned out as just progressively getting that much further ahead and in the last three-four minutes, I played the whole bench. I took the entire starting five off.”
Though maintaining their intensity throughout the contest, the Spiders did make the hosts earn their win.
The visitors shot well in the first half, but the Goldminers adjusted their defensive patterns to shut down the players who Osborn and co-coach Ben Slater had identified as threats.
“Defensively we did quite a good job in the first half and I talked to them at half-time – and they recognised this too which is good – about how we just had to be patient and just wait for that last explosion at the end,” Osborn said.
“What they did was just hang off their man just a tad which then gave them room to pounce when the final explosion came. In the second half, nine times out of 10, we either got an intercept or they had to throw up a shot which was not a good shot.
“They [Spiders] got very, very frustrated with that.”
One area that Osborn said did let the Goldminers down was an “abysmal” conversion rate with their free-throws. Had they been more accurate from the stripe, the winning margin could have been close to 40 points.
“We spend hours and hours and hours working on our free throws, so I don’t know what the issue was. At one stage we were one from eight,” he said.
“I guess sometimes our shot selection wasn’t the best either, but other than that, we played some really, really good offensive basketball and brought the crowd to their feet.
“We didn’t drop our bundle, we kept at it, and in the second half a with the couple of the changes we made, their main shooter, Will [Cranston-Lown] pretty much took him out of the game.”
Osborn hopes to see another large crowd in attendance this Saturday when the Goldminers host Most Vale.
