Belief fires confident Red Cliffs

RED Cliffs cannot be taken lightly anymore, winning two games in a row after seven years of losses.

Harnessing a new-found confidence after defeating both Mildura South and Robinvale Euston, Red Cliffs hope to remain competitive against Mildura in today’s round five game.

Mildura co-coach Sharon Watson said the team was planning a strong performance this weekend against the Tigers.

“Nobody can take Red Cliffs lightly now they’ve had a couple of wins, which is really good to see,” she said.

“We are just going to have to be on our game, put four solid quarters on and fingers crossed we are not one of their scalps this year.”

Red Cliffs coach Steph O’Loughlin said getting some wins on the board was great, but the team still had some work to do.

“We felt good about that (round 3) win against South Mildura,” she said.

“But after the (round 4) game against Robinvale Euston, we got the win, but I wouldn’t say it was a great win.

“We definitely didn’t play our best and we have definitely got some areas to improve on this week.”

O’Loughlin said now the team had the belief they could win, it was just a matter of “putting four quarters together”.

She said the girls had been working on various strategies to improve their game.

“(We are working on) our connection down the court, making sure we are staying in our positions and not coming up the ground too early,” she said.

“Just being able to connect with each other and figuring out each other’s game.”

O’Loughlin said on Thursday that she hoped the Tigers would have their full team for today’s game.

“We are hoping to have our full side but we have had a few sick this week so we are not sure if we will have our full side this weekend yet,” she said.

“We are just playing it day by day, but wither way I think it will be a great contest.”

Mildura have a three-game winning streak after defeating Merbein, Irymple and Imperials.

“We have been really happy with how things are progressing, we have got a good balance of height, youth, a bit of experience and we all gel really well together as a group,” Watson said.

“We are going to have our work cut out with (O’Loughlin playing today) because she is a very experienced and very smart player. But again it is seven on seven so we will just see what happens.”