Launceston Tornadoes ended Kilsyth’s 10-game winning streak – the longest this year in the SEABL – to put together its best victory under Richard Dickel’s reign.
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The 78-66 win on the road left the coach feeling the attitude had turned around from a poor loss to the Geelong Supercats seven days earlier.
“Those streaks have to end sometime and why can’t it be us?” Dickel said after inflicting the Cobras’ third loss.
“We went out and put a lot better performance on the court and addressed some of the issues from last week.
“Hopefully that can now flow on for the next game.”
Dickel admitted he did not mince words with his team and that, along with the return of Asian Cup-bound Opal Lauren Mansfield, work wonders facing the women’s east conference leaders.
“The girls copped it quite a bit at training this week from me, but it was what was needed,” he said.
“Just a bit of discipline to come back into it and they played accordingly well.”
But while Mansfield in her captaincy role helped steady the ship, it was the workhorses Tayla Roberts and Lauren Nicholson that delivered near identical numbers.
Roberts finished with 23 points and eight rebounds in 36:45 on court while Nicholson had 22 and 10 from playing 22 less seconds.
The Tornadoes had been challenged late in the third term when Kilsyth squared up the match after trailing by eight at half-time.
But Nicholson and Roberts pipped off points at will to push the margin back out to eight points by the last change.
Launceston never surrendered the lead since midway through the first quarter, winning three of them and tying up the other which proved to impress Dickel.
“At both ends of court, that was definitely the most complete performances we’ve had and probably also the most calm, in terms of executing and dealing with the pressure,” he said.
“We were doing all the things that we need to do to win games like that.
“It was really good for us; it was what we needed and we needed a performance like that on the court regardless of the result.”
The Tornadoes now move into joint second spot in the south conference from a 11-6 win/loss record.