Shooters Abbie Gray and Katelyn Stansfield may have stood out with an “outstanding” 90 per cent shooting accuracy in Hunter United’s 49-45 win over Baulkham Hills Shire, but coach Traci Baber believes the win came down to “the best team effort we’ve put in this season”.
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“Everybody contributed all over the court, and at the end we had outstanding shooting statistics for Gray and Stansfield,” Baber said of United’s performance.
“I think they missed between them around four goals all night, and everyone else on the court did their jobs and at the end of the day we got great goals in.”
The first division Emeralds moved into fifth place with the 4-goal win on Thursday evening, but they sit outside a finals position in the Metro League simply on point difference.
The club is currently level with Hills District and Northern Suburbs, who are in third and fourth respectively, and Baber confirmed she believes it’s a factor that will be “massive” come season-end.
“It’s such a tight competition. We’ve already spoken about that and for-and-against is going to decide semi-final positions this year for sure,” Baber said. “The team wants to score as many as we can.”
United’s head coach also said she believes if the team sticks to their style of play, and continues focusing on key training sessions, the season will continue in an upward trend.
“There’s always improvement, and every single week we try to improve on every part of our game,” she said.
Baber listed a series of analytics the team is working on, ranging from “turn-overs, shooting percentages, loose balls and balls thrown out of courts”, and she believes if they can “work on mistakes” those stats will continue to climb.
“We look at a lot of stats and percentages and every week we want our stats to be better than the week before,” she said.
“Last week we set a number of goals for the team and every one that we set they improved on, so if we continue like that we’re really happy with where the team is sitting at the moment. Really happy.”
Earlier in the week, the Hunter United Diamonds continue to struggle in breaking away from the bottom positions in the standings, after a 52-43 defeat at the hands of third placed Parramatta.
The third division squad is now in ninth place after seven rounds have been played, with a positive percentage over Sutherland keeping them from the bottom spot.
Next Monday, the Diamonds will continue their campaign against Inner Western Suburbs, while the first division Emeralds come up against seventh placed Ku-ring-gai on Thursday evening in their path to a finals position.