Elsie Lange
The Sunbury Jets’ Big V men’s championship division season has come to an end following a second consecutive loss to Wyndham on Saturday, 87-75.
Jets coach John White said the team was disappointed and surprised the grand final series was over in just two matches.
“It would have been nice to take it to a third game,” White said.
The team faced a few injuries leading into the series and White said he was proud of the players for their season in the face of it all.
“Ish Sanders came into the series with an AC joint injury in his shoulder and we had Trevon Clayton with a back issue, and Nathan Marshall with two bad ankles … three of our starters,” White said.
“It’s not an excuse for us … we’ve been able to manage the injuries but it was another bit of adversity we had to deal with during the week.”
The first quarter finished tight, with Wyndham ahead 26-25, and White said both teams did a good job of “executing their scout against each other”, before Jets finished half time down again, 47-56.
“The third quarter started a bit the same as the second quarter finished … But we had a time out with about five minutes to go in that third quarter and made some adjustments defensively, which seemed to work,” White said.
He said three-quarter time “came at the wrong time” for the Jets, as Wyndham pushed on in the fourth quarter and “[held] us out”.
“I was pretty happy with the performance of Sanders for us,” White said.
“Obviously with the injury, but [he] also had a lot of extra attention placed onto him by Wyndham and they did a good job for the most part, but he was able to keep the scoreboard ticking over for us.”
Sanders was the Jets’ top scorer for the match (27), followed by Gerald Blackshear (12), Maxwell Barkeley (9), Clayton (8) and Marshall (4).
White said the team would now have time to “grieve” before taking the lessons they learnt from this season into the next.
“It’s not a short turnaround, but it’s not a long one either,” he said.
“We’ve got to look to start recruiting again in about a month’s time and then we go into our open try-outs phase for next season.”
White came on as men’s coach in September last year and said since then, the team made an effort to recruit good people, “rather than good talent”.
“I feel that you can always teach talent how to play, but the people we recruited were just amazing for us,” he said.
“Every personality fitted in really well with the group, so that’s a really massive lesson going forward, is that that’s going to be a staple for us.
“In terms of our on court play, we’ve got to learn to make adjustments to deal with extra attention on certain players.”
