WITH a team featuring the likes of Kate Malpass, Louella Tomlinson, Zoe Harper, Ebony Antonio, Lara Napier, Desiree Kelley and Emma Lobb means that Willetton Tigers coach Simon Parker tries to leave as much up to them as he can and it's certainly working well.

Coming off a Grand Final loss to the Rockingham Flames last year, Parker had full trust that his group had everything required to not only get back to the same point in 2016 but to go one step better and things are now on track following last Friday night.

After finishing the regular season in third position and then beating the Lakeside Lightning in two games in the quarter finals, the Tigers headed to Rockingham last Friday and made quite the statement against the champions of the past two years.

Willetton dominated the game at both ends of the floor from the outset ending up recording an 82-59 victory to now be just one win away from another Grand Final appearance.

Game 2 takes place this Friday night at Willetton Basketball Stadium giving the Tigers the chance to win the series on their home floor. If not, Game 3 will be back at Mike Barnett Sports Complex on Saturday night.

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Coaching a Women's or Men's team always has its own unique set of challenges, but what Parker focuses on with his experienced and talented Tigers group is to give them the outline of what they need to do and leave a lot of it up to them out on the floor depending on the flow of the game.

When he has someone like Malpass running the point and Tomlinson dominating inside, it's certainly a process that works well.

"Women are pretty hard to coach at times to be honest, so I don’t try to control them too tightly. We have our stuff in place and it was just up to us as coaches to make the subs to keep everyone fresh and to identify some little things." Parker said.

"It's good when they listen to you but we just try to let them play as well. Before the game, Kate said we all know our x's and o's, now it's just all about getting out there playing nice and hard, and having a bit of fun at the same time."

Parker shortened his rotation to using just seven girls out on the floor last Friday night and given the way the Tigers were dominating a team featuring four current WNBL players and who has won the last two SBL championships, he saw no reason to change from the seven who were playing so well.

"The key is having people coming off the bench and making a difference, you can't go in there and your first play is a missed defensive play," he said.

"It has to be a stop or a rebound, it doesn’t have to be a score but does have to be a defensive play. The whole night whoever came in kept the pressure up."

Antonio and Napier both were given the task of defending Flames star Sami Whitcomb and Willetton put in a lot of time and effort into setting traps for her, and double-teaming her at times.

Usually that is a dangerous practice against the Flames, but on Friday they didn’t have anyone making the Tigers pay for the extra attention given to Whitcomb.

Parker couldn’t have been happier with how that perimeter defence worked on not only Whitcomb, but Ifunanya Ibekwe and then how Tomlinson was able to get on top of her match up inside with Darcee Garbin.

"We have really good on-ball defenders. Ebs did a really good job on Whitcomb and then Lara comes off the bench and gives her a workout so she probably gets no rest there," he said.

"She still hit a couple of big shots coming off an on-ball when it was a breakdown on our defence, but we focused on working hard on Sam, Darcee and Ibekwe. We felt if we could slow them down we'd have a chance.

"Lou did a great job. Darcee hit a three at the start there and we had to close her down and carry a hand on her shot, and Lou is like a radar with that hand up there ready to block a shot.

"Lou is pretty hard to make a shot over in the post and on the three. We made sure that we weren’t more than a metre or a metre and a half off girls like that, so we had people to close out and scramble all the time. That was the game plan."

While Willetton delivered an outstanding defensive performance to shut down the Flames, things went well down the other end as well led by Malpass who finished with 28 points, five rebounds and five assists.

Parker has become somewhat accustomed to how good Malpass is but believes she deserves a bit more recognition even from inside the team's walls.

"I don’t give her any play either and I should because if you look at the top three teams, we are very lucky to have a classy point guard. I don’t give her enough credit to be honest when I speak to people, but she is absolutely brilliant," Parker said.

"She was excited about this series and was pretty happy in the change rooms before the game, and she doesn’t like comments like coaches saying they want to cut the head off the snake. She wanted to prove a point and I think she did that in that game.

"Those comments were obviously directed at her because she's our main ball carrier so if they got the ball out of her hands it would change our whole game plan, but we made a few little changes on offence. Ours is more concept stuff and she did a really good job."

Article by Chris Pike
Photo by June Halliday