Slammers women building for the future

COLLIE Crane Hire South West Slammers' women's coach Darren Austin is taking a long-term approach by blooding plenty of young players in the 2014 SBL season, but is confident his team who won the 2012 title can remain supremely competitive this year still.

Coming off the 2012 championship win, the Slammers only managed to finish eighth at the end of last year's regular season but then stunned the minor premiers Willetton eliminating the Tigers before coming up short against the runner-up Kalamunda Eastern Suns.

With Zoe Harper, Kara Hargreaves and 2012 grand final MVP Kim Sitzmann no longer with the Slammers, it is somewhat of a rebuilding season but coach Austin is of the belief that can be done while remain a strong force in the competition as well.

The biggest loss undoubtedly is Sitzmann but Austin has been impressed with what new import Amy Patton has delivered over her first three games averaging 14.3 points, 12.7 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 2.0 steals.

"It's pretty hard to fill shoes like Kimmy's, but Amy comes in from Northern Arizona and she was the all-time leading scorer and rebounder at that college," Austin said.

"This is her first gig straight out of college last year and she is absolutely loving it. She is a wonderful person and a wonderful player. She probably just needs to get consistency of games and I think she is someone who will really improve. I think she is great for our group."

Another player that Austin has been reasonably pleased with over the first three matches for the Slammers has been Lauren Jeffers. Even though he wouldn’t mind seeing her turnover numbers come down a little after 12 last Friday against the Rockingham Flames.

"I did mention to Lauren after the game that she did get a triple-double, but unfortunately one of those was a negative stat," he said.

"Lauren over the years has been a pretty high turnover type of player and that's what is going to happen when you have the ball in your hands a lot.

"Lauren just needs to pick and choose when to pass the ball and that's something we are trying to work on. She has been great for us and is trying to steady the ship and guide us around the floor."

While every team in the women's competition has played at least four and in some cases seven matches this season, the Slammers have played just the three starting with a win at home over Kalamunda followed by losses on the road to Lakeside and Rockingham.

Overall, Austin feels his team is situated where they deserve to be after their opening three matches.

"When you lose your bigs at the start of the season with Valerie Ogoke again needing an operation and we were trying to Sue Fuhrmann in, but unfortunately her knee didn’t come up," Austin said.

"Obviously we have gone very young this year and we are probably where we deserve to be, but the 58-point drubbing we copped from the Lightning was quite a poor effort.

"But on the weekend against the Flames we probably played our best game of the year and there were enough positives there that we can bring into the Mandurah game."

Austin also isn’t afraid to throw in a youngster like Georgia Denehy at times this season to help build the future of the club.

"We have a young team and we have an under-16 girl Georgia Denehy playing a little bit of time for us, and that's a good experience for her," he said.

"When we don’t have Zoe Harper or Kara Hargreaves, we lose a lot of experience and need to get experience into those younger girls. Hopefully in the long run over the next two, three, four or five years those girls come through and become our core group."

Having played just the three games in five weeks, Austin is now looking forward to a sustained run of fixtures starting this Saturday against the Magic, then the Flames, Redbacks, Eastern Suns, Lightning and Senators before three straight home clashes against the Eagles, Wolves and Senators.

"We've already had two byes. We had a bye in the first round of fixtures and then we only played two games before another bye and then we played Rockingham. Now we play Mandurah and we play Rockingham again," Austin said.

"We give them the weekends off in those weeks, but on the Thursday we train hard and do a lot of scrimmage work before coming back in on the Tuesday.

"We've got a young group this year and we need continuous games now. We do have quite a few coming up over the next month or so and we will see where we will stand after that."

Article by Chris Pike




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