Match Report: Adelaide start strong then hold off Fire

29/OCT/2007 – The Townsville Fire gave away a huge start before falling agonisingly short of victory against the Adelaide Lightning on Saturday night, writes Josh Alston for The Townsville Bulletin.

A dramatic second-half comeback saw the Fire lose 77-73 to the WNBL powerhouses at SeaFM Stadium.

The Fire were steamrolled by the Lightning in the first half when the visitors piled on 49 points to 33 and looked like they were set to post a cricket score on the misfiring Townsville team.

The Lightning's 197cm centre and former Australian Opal Jenny Whittle tore the Fire apart in the first half with a perfect seven from seven from the field - four of those from beyond the three-point arc.

But the Fire surged back into the game with an eight-point run in the final quarter courtesy of big shots from Rohanee Cox and co-captain Tania Baxter after trailing by as many as 18 points.

Despite dominating the Lightning for the entire second half, the Fire were unable to reel them in and were left to rue what could have been in their four-point loss.

Coach Peter Buckle said although he was disappointed with the loss he believed the Fire could match it with any team in the league after restricting the Lightning to just 28 points in the second half.

"What does that say about us? If we go `D' (defence) for the full game, for four quarters, now we're really holding an offensively bound team and we can get over the hurdle," he said.

"We held them to 28 in the second half, are we at their level? Yes we are.

"But it's got to be a four-quarter thing.

"You've got to give full credit to the girls how they turned things around, some leadership things from (Baxter) and (Jennifer) Crouse without (Rohanee) Cox having a great game for sure, we came out and played aggressively, we played hard, we played good `D' in the second half, we just didn't get it done in the first half."

The Fire opened the game strongly through baskets to Cox and Biancia Abbott to take an early 4-0 lead but were stunned by the sharpshooting of Whittle as the Lightning opened up an 11-4 advantage.

Things quickly went from bad to worse as Adelaide extended their lead to a massive 16 points with Whittle and Tracy Gahan unstoppable from the field.

The second quarter was more of the same as point-guard Angela Marino frustrated the Fire's defence to set up numerous shots for her teammates to give the visitors a 49-33 point buffer at halftime.

But the third quarter saw Baxter spark into action, a six-point run from the guard allowing the Fire to claw back to within eight points of Adelaide.

As the Fire lifted the Lightning faltered and it was all one-way traffic in the final quarter and the game was in the balance with the Fire trailing by just four points with four minutes to go.

But they were unable to land the finishing blow on Adelaide with some poor discipline on the foul line and some questionable calls against the Fire leaving them stranded on the fulltime buzzer.

The Fire will play Canberra in Canberra next weekend.

By Josh Alston for The Townsville Bulletin.