By JARROD POTTER
A CAPITAL charge from Canberra stars Natalie Hurst and Abby Bishop was enough to knock off Dandenong by eight points on Saturday night.
Brushing off last week’s loss to the Rangers at home, Canberra travelled to Dandenong on Saturday night with ferocious intent.
Attacking the basket at will, shooting with flagrant disregard for Dandenong’s defence, Capitals guard Hurst proved unstoppable as Leilani Mitchell (13pts, 4ast) tried to go toe-to-toe with the Capitals’ scoring machine.
Hurst drilled 31 points and dished off 10 assists to carry the Capitals to the 93-85 victory over Dandenong.
The Rangers’ roster rotated to accommodate the lofty challenge of defending Capitals’ tall-trio Abby Bishop (22pts, 15reb), Alex Bunton (6pts, 6reb) and former Dandenong Ranger Carley Mijovic (12pts, 6reb).
A back-and-forth first half had Canberra ahead mostly as Mijovic drilled a three-pointer on the half-time buzzer to earn a 27-24 lead.
Dandenong drew the lead on occasion after the main break – holding onto it throughout most of the third quarter – but Canberra rallied to finish the term ahead at the final break 51-47.
Dandenong’s endeavour fell short in the final term, after edging back into the match to bring a 12-point gap back down to five.
Fouling out were Alice Kunek (18pts) and Brigitte Ardossi (2pts, 5reb) to hurt the Rangers’ rotations down the final stretch, but the remaining roster persevered to squeeze the margin back down to five.
Jenna O’Hea toiled all night for her usual output – hitting 12-21 from the field to register 26 points and also take seven rebounds, while Kayla Pedersen stood tall against Bishop and earned 17 points and 12 rebounds.
“Still trying to work out why every single team in the league feels they can shoot the ball as freely as they can against us,” Dandenong coach Mark Wright said.
“You’ve got to hand it to Canberra, they shot the hell out of it and we thought we were playing reasonable but they made a tremendous percentage, 47 per cent from the field and 50 per cent from the three-point line, that’s a good night out.”
Dandenong has conceded five scores over 75 points from its eight matches so far this season and Wright admits that defensive laxness isn’t good enough.
“Not sure if we’ve given them encouragement or if they all rose to the occasion but it’s happened to us way too often where teams score too many points against us, so it can’t be all luck,” Wright said.
“We need to address that.”
With an injury to Aimie Clydesdale (finger) and the unavailability of Rebecca Mercer, Dandenong rising star Rachel Antoniadou was placed onto the active roster, but didn’t gain court time in her first outing in WNBL Rangers colours.
Dandenong will face Logan at home on Friday night before flying up to New South Wales to face Sydney Uni Flames on Saturday night.
