Launceston Tornadoes captain Lauren Mansfield is hoping to carry the momentum and confidence from their preliminary final victory over Geelong into their SEABL southern conference grand final against Kilsyth in Melbourne on Saturday.
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The 26-year-old guard will lead the Torns into battle against the Lady Cobras for the second time in a fortnight and is convinced her team is capable of pulling off an upset grand final victory against the title favourites, despite their semi-final defeat two weeks ago.
“It’s always good to play against Kilsyth the team we have lost to a few times now in the finals,” Mansfield said.
“I think it’s going to be a very competitive game and hopefully we can come home with a win over on their home court.”
Mansfield said she spoke to her team before their Geelong win about being more aggressive and assertive with everything they do after being “ a bit passive” against Kilsyth in their semi the week before.
“We needed to come out and be more aggressive offensively and defensively as well and we definitely did that in the first half and I think that is why we were so effective.
“I think playing Geelong and playing with that assertiveness – we all gained a lot of confidence.
“Geelong is one of the toughest teams in the comp so to go out there and do that against them in the first half gets us all feeling more confident about who we are and the way we can play so I think we will go into the game very confident.”
Getting off to a good start will be vital after being slow out of the blocks a fortnight ago and allowing the Cobras to build a 20-point lead early in the game from which they battled to fight back.
“We need to have a good start and be there with them going into half-time,” Mansfield said.
“We can be more effective inside too – finding the big girls when they are open – we definitely have a mis-match against them and we’re a lot taller than Kilsyth so if we pound the ball inside a bit and get our bigs going then we should be able to feed off that.”
Despite her extensive SEABL and WNBL experience the Adelaide athlete said she still gets nervous before big games especially in a knockout or do-or-die situation but believed they could combat the Cobras home crowd advantage.
“When the home team makes runs especially on their home court it can be tough but we need to make sure we get into our huddles and encourage each other and stick together knowing we have each other’s backs out there on the court.”
