Launceston Tornadoes face Sandringham in NBL1 South round 15

Coach Sarah Veale is expecting a good NBL1 South battle in the penultimate round.

"They're a talented group of guards, they've got Britt Smart who played with Canberra Caps and Funda Nakkasoglu," she said.

"They've also got Georgia Pineau and Amy O'Neill so they've got four pretty good guards.

"Then they've got Rachel Jarry who's a retiring player but she's got lots of experience as well. She's an ex-Opal.

"They're going to be really tough. Their strength is probably in their guards so that kind of helps us a bit because they're going to have their hands full with Frols (Keely Froling). Hopefully that'll play to our advantage."

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The Torns were disappointed with their 96-76 losing effort against Waverley at Elphin Sports Centre last weekend.

Veale feels there's work to do in defence.

"Our scout was to stop their offensive transition and and our defensive transition was not good enough," she said.

"They got lots of points in the paint early and had lots of early offence because of the way we were defending. We got caught on our ball-screen defence action.

"So we made some adjustments and that helped. Without (Marianna) Tolo and Kelsey (Griffin) in there, we've still got a team that can score 70-80 points.

"So that's never been an issue for us. Our defence has been a focal point all season and while we're definitely better, we're still very inconsistent.

"It's making sure we bring that to all four quarters of every game and going into finals that's going to be really important and that'll be the difference between us winning and losing."

On top of that, the Falcons played a strong defensive game which Froling noted during the week.

As she said: "We let Waverley dictate us".

"Waverley pressed us and played us up in the full-court. We have great guards and we can deal with that," she said.

"We've worked on that sort of stuff at training. And I think it was just those mental lapses really, more than anything (that cost us)."

It will be free entry for any Launceston Basketball Association junior member on Saturday.

All they have to do is wear their local club or Launceston Lightning uniform to the game.

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