Launceston Lightning's women will be shooting for their shot at glory this weekend at the Basketball Tasmania gala weekend.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The sole Northern side featuring in the State League semi-finals at Elphin Sports Centre on Saturday, the Lightning face Basketball Tasmania's high performance team, who they beat by 40 points a fortnight ago.
However, coach Sarah Veale knows that Saturday's 12pm game won't be that easy.
"Obviously our plans are to make the grand final but our thought process at the moment is one game at a time," she said.
"We know that the high performance team will be a different group to who we played two weeks ago in Ulverstone and we had a pretty convincing win over them.
"We don't expect that to be the same so we aren't getting too far ahead of ourselves, we have a plan in place for them and if we can manage to win that one and then who knows who will play in the next one."
The other semi-final sees the undefeated Penguin battle the Kingborough-Huon Kings, and while Veale suspects the top side may get through, she knows anything can happen with fourth-placed Wynyard winning last year's title.
"I think Penguin will just be the team to beat, they've got size and guards and the thing for us is that we don't have size, we are a group of really, really strong guards so we just have to play to our strengths and see what happens."
Looking through the high performance side, Veale identified Charli Kay, Zoe Banks and Macey Crawford as the players to watch, with the latter getting more game fitness into her after injury.
The Lightning coach encouraged the Launceston basketball community to head to Elphin to watch the games and cheer her side into Sunday's final.
"I think it's awesome to see great basketballers playing against each other and there will be a number of Tornadoes and Hobart Chargers players on court against and with each other.
"All three [women's] games will be really competitive so I think it's a great opportunity for people to come and watch good quality basketball."
The men's semi-finals see the Burnie Tigers face the Southern Wolves and the undefeated Glenorchy play the Penguin Blues.
Josh Partridge
As a sports-mad fan who loves to remain challenged, sports journalism always seemed the path for me and it's allowed me to do things I never thought possible. A keen racquet sports player, I'm experienced in that field, allowing me to do my job at a strong standard.
As a sports-mad fan who loves to remain challenged, sports journalism always seemed the path for me and it's allowed me to do things I never thought possible. A keen racquet sports player, I'm experienced in that field, allowing me to do my job at a strong standard.
