THE Swan Hill Flyers will go into this Saturday night’s rematches against Mildura as underdogs, after both the men’s and women’s teams suffered losses to the Heat at home on Friday night.
In front of a packed stadium, the Flyers were unable to give a parochial home crowd the ultimate reason to cheer, with the men’s team suffering a last-quarter fadeout to fall nine points short, and the women’s team no match for the taller and stronger Heat in their 30-point loss.
With coach Hugh Broad out injured, the Flyers were further undermanned with the late omission of Steve Bowden, forcing Swan Hill to find more minutes from their development-squad players Julian Muir and Bryce Anderson.
The Flyers were undeterred for the first three quarters, mixing it with the Heat to trail by just one point at the final break, before Mildura went on a nine-point run at the start of the final term to blow the game open.
Although frustrated to not secure the maximum points at home, Flyers coach Hugh Broad was philosophical after the match with the squad already looking forward to having another shot at the Heat this weekend on enemy territory.
“It wasn’t the result we wanted, but we have them again this weekend and we’re really excited to get another opportunity to get the result,” Broad told The Guardian.
“(Archer) Hammond scored a lot of points for them, but they just had bigger bodies and a lot of talls, which is an area we were lacking.
“It was an incredible atmosphere and the boys all played really well, we got some strong shots away which was good and we didn’t back down from the challenge, which was another positive.
“Lachie Somerville played incredibly well, he shot really well and drove to the basket, and it was a very physical game for him and he was fouled a lot.
“He comes away from most games pretty banged up, but he never backs down from a challenge and that’s what we were telling him all night, don’t back down and just take the game on and he did.”
Somerville ended the night as the Flyers’ leading scorer with 28 points, while Matthew Gardner also had a night out with 21.
It was a similar story for Swan Hill’s women’s side, who despite being competitive in general play, were no match on the scoreboard after missing several scoring opportunities throughout the night, which coach Adam Kerr lamented.
“It was good and bad, but we really struggled with penetrating their zone,” Kerr said.
“Mildura played a zone for a lot of the night and I’m not really a fan of a zone defence, purely from a development side of things, so we struggled with that a little bit.
“Defensively we weren’t too bad, a couple of early fouls put a couple of players in trouble, and we didn’t shoot the ball particularly well.
“We were up and about in the warm-up, but we had a lot of rim-outs and a lot of missed opportunities on the offensive end, a couple more buckets early on and it could have been a much closer contest.
“We’re trying to instil a score-first mentality and give them almost a bit of a licence that if they can get to the rim, or if they’re open and they think they can make the shot, then to take it, and we’re slowly getting there.
“I don’t like to just run an offence for no reason, we have to have an attacking mentality and they do at times, but if it doesn’t go in, our heads drop a little bit, which can kick us in the butt a little bit on the other end.
“There are still plenty of positives, they’re still competing pretty hard and there are small patches where we can get on a bit of a run, but not enough to compete with the good teams.”
Tess Denham and Scarlet Grey led the way for the Flyers, with both players posting 11 points, with strong contributions from Karla Allen and Shaylea Kerr on transition.
