THE Swan Hill Flyers will be aiming to resurrect their finals chances on the road this weekend, with both the men’s and women’s teams to face the Mildura Heat.
With both teams suffering losses to the Heat last Friday night, tomorrow night will be all about redemption at the Hothouse, with the men’s team needing to win to climb back into the top four.
Steve Bowden is expected to return for the Flyers, having been a late omission last Friday night, with Bowden’s height and size expected to be a massive asset against Mildura’s taller opposition.
“They (Mildura) just had bigger bodies and a lot of talls, which is an area with which we were lacking last Friday night,” Swan Hill coach Hugh Broad said earlier this week.
“We got some strong shots in, which was good and we didn’t back down from the challenge which was also a positive, but they (Archer) Hammond scored 40 points against us on the weekend and we can’t let him do that again.
“One thing that we mentioned after the game last Friday was that it wasn’t by chance that it was a close game at half-time, but rather it was because we worked really hard.
“Instead of thinking we’re just a small country club that’s in a really good position because we’ve hit a lot of shots and we’re having a bit of luck tonight, we’ve changed our thinking to realising that we’re in this position because we’ve worked really hard.
“We’ve run five or six kilometres at training, we’ve put in the hard yards and this is the reward we get in that we’re competing with top teams.
“A bit of belief just changes the dynamics of the team when we get on the court, we know that we worked really hard to be in good positions when we play good teams.”
Lachlan Somerville will again be a key player for Swan Hill, having scored 28 points last Friday evening, while Matthew and Lachlan Gardner will also need to be at their best if they are to cause an upset.
The women’s team will also travel north to Mildura on Saturday night, before embarking on another road trip on Sunday to tackle the Maryborough Blazers in a standalone fixture.
The double header will be Swan Hill’s last for the season, with the Flyers having just two games remaining over the final two rounds, with head coach Adam Kerr expecting to manage his young squad both this weekend and for the remainder of the season.
“We’ll have a few out this weekend, we have a few battered bodies after last weekend and with us playing a lot of juniors, we don’t want to run them into the ground and have any long term consequences,” Kerr told The Guardian this week.
“We’ll go up to Mildura pretty light and then back it up in Maryborough with a similar squad, but the nine or 10 players we take into the weekend, will put their best foot forward and put in another good performance.
“It’s (this weekend) is an opportunity for some of the girls and if they take that opportunity, there’ll be more minutes and more games available to them.
“The positives are that the younger girls are really developing. Even looking at the junior tournament last weekend and the ones who are playing good minutes in the CBL, when you put them on the court against kids their own age, they’re a little bit quicker, a little bit stronger and a little bit more polished at times.
“Ultimately, that’s what our goal is, to make these kids better and make it harder for our more senior players to get game time in the next couple of years, which will put our team in a much healthier position.”
The Swan Hill women’s match against the Mildura Heat will start from 5.30pm Saturday evening, with the men’s tip-off to follow at 7.30pm, while the women’s game against the Maryborough Blazers is from 12.30pm in Maryborough on Sunday.
