LJ in Pain

LJ's return to the court today was no longer definite. According to the Canberra Times she is experiencing pain in her leg around the healed fracture. Coach Graf was going to wait until later today to make the final decision on playing LJ. She wanted to see if LJ was just feeling sore from her first game pace workouts in three months or if she was aggravating the original injury. They may decide to play her in the second game of the back to back against Sydney University tomorrow.

In the end Lauren Jackson did not dress and had to watch her team lose 89-65 to the Fire.

Townesville Coach David Herbert had hoped LJ would play tonight for the league and for his players to play against one of the greatest players in the history of their league, but his game plan was focused on disrupting Capitals point guard and former Storm standout, Tully Bevilaqua. Tully had 19 points, 3 steals and 9 rebounds when the Capitals beat the Fire in December. The game plan did stop Tully from helping out too much on offense, holding her to 4 points and 1 assist, and kept her of the boards, limiting her to 2 rebounds. She was pesky on defense with 5 steals, however.

Jenny Whittle (19), Angela Marino (17) and Kellie Abrams (11) led the Capitals in scoring and Whittle also added 13 rebounds, 3 assists a block and a steal for another solid all around game. The Fire were led by Claudia Brassard (18), Rohanee Cox (17), Jennifer Crouse (12), Kelly Wilson (11) and Tania Heritage (10) to have a much more well balanced scoring attack. Crouse added 14 rebounds and 4 blocks while Cox led the team with 6 steals.