The Cockburn Cougars improved to a 13-0 record this NBL1 West season beating the East Perth Eagles 101-43 on Friday night with all 12 players getting to make an impact.
The Cougars arrived at Herb Graham Recreation Centre on Friday night putting their unbeaten record on the line against an Eagles team trying to snap a four-game losing run to stay in the playoff hunt.
Cockburn put up 24 points to nine in the opening quarter and while the 24 points was nice, it was the hounding, pressure defence to take the Eagles totally out of their game that was the most impressive aspect.
That didn’t let up the rest of the evening and the Cougars produced another 29 points to 13 in the second period to head into the half-time interval leading 53-22.
The dominance was even more stark in the third period from Cockburn with 27 points to just four from East Perth. That saw the Cougars lead grow to 54 points and it became 63 in the fourth period before they settled on the 58-point victory.
It was a remarkably dominant performance from Cockburn with 61 rebounds to 37 which helped them to take an extra 18 field goals to East Perth and 13 more free-throws.
Jewel Williams produced another strong performance as point guard for the Cougars with 25 points and four assists while draining 7/12 from three-point territory.
Sarah Mortensen put up another 20 points, seven rebounds, four assists and two steals, Jessie Edwards 10 points and 11 boards, Amelia Corasaniti nine points and three assists, and Steph Gorman nine points, six assists, three rebounds and three steals.
Patty Brossmann also had eight points, 13 boards and five assists, Zaya Black eight points and two steals, and Kinley Paterson six points, four rebounds and three steals.
Cougars coach Tyrone Thwaites usually finds things to be grumpy about post-match, but not so much this week.
“I’m actually surprisingly not grumpy about it because it was a good performance and we got plenty out of it,” Thwaites said.
“We had a plan that if we took care of things early we would actually work through a few things, and we got an opportunity to do that on Friday night both for our bench and starters as well because we’re still working Patty in.
“To work through some things offensively and defensively that we wanted to get a little bit better at, we got the chance to get that done.”
In the end, all 12 players hit the floor and played at least 10 minutes.
“It wasn’t the plan necessarily going in because we didn’t know how the game was going to play out,” Thwaites added.
“But even when it started to turn in our favour relatively early, it was a case of rewarding those who should be rewarded and trying some different line-ups, and giving some of our bench an opportunity to put their case forward if we need to go a little bit deeper later in the year about why they deserve to be out on the floor.”
The Cougars are now sitting on a perfect 13-0 record this season and with each win are getting closer of achieving their goal of at least securing a top two finish heading into the playoffs.
However, Thwaites isn’t taking anything for granted with games to finish against the Mandurah Magic, Perry Lakes Hawks, Perth Redbacks, Willetton Tigers, Goldfields Giants, South West Slammers and Kalamunda Eastern Suns.
“We’re certainly happy but not content and that will continue to be our message moving forward,” Thwaites said.
“We certainly have a tough weekend ahead and you can kind of figure out from here roughly where you’re going to sit. But we want to take care of a top two finish and we’ve got an opportunity to do that this weekend.”
