Women's State Cup / Ramle hopes to recover in second game of final series
By Arie Livnat
Bnot Hasharon and Elitzur Ramle will tonight square off for the second game of the league final series in Ramle at 7:30 P.M.
Bnot Hasharon seemed to be on the verge of being thrown out of the cup two weeks ago, when the team was trailing 2-0 against its rival Ramat Chen. But since then, the team has easily won four games in a row (three against Ramat Chen, and one in the first game of the championship playoff against Bnot Hasharon). Despite his winning streak, Bnot Hasharon coach Shiki Falah fears today's game.
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"This will be a different kind of game than the first," Falah said. "Ramle's back is against the wall. Toward the end of the first game, [Ramle coach Eli] Rabi was already thinking about this game, so he sent Katia Abramzon to the showers to keep her strength in the third quarter. We need to be no less determined than we were in the first game, especially as they will be more determined. This game will play out differently."
Following his team's defeat in the first game, Ramle coach Rabi canceled practice the next day and instead organized a team picnic to reacquaint his players with one another. "We're trying to work more as a team because we weren't one in the first game," he said.
"I told the girls: 'We've been working hard for six months, and that's the best we could do?'"
Indeed, Ramle on Monday seemed like it did not really care, perhaps because its players were confident they can reverse the damage done in the rest of the series. Rabi disagrees. "The girls ran, but easily got agitated. But we conceded points every time the team was defending, and that unhinged our offensive confidence. We know what our mission is. We are prepared, but not hysterical."
The Wright stuff
The key to the encounter is probably Bnot Hasharon's Tanisha Wright, who almost ended the first game with a triple double. She was good in Bnot Hasharon's first two wins in the league and scored 42 points in the cup finals' first game. However, she was held down to two points and ejected from the game while playing Ramle in the second round of the league.
"If I knew how to stop Tanisha Wright, I'd do it in the first game," Rabi admits. "We used to have three tall players who would enter a defensive rotation, but we can't do that anymore. We use the tools we have available. We'll try to stop her on the team level.
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