Former Adelaide 36ers coach Scott Ninnis begins Adelaide Lightning coaching stint with win over reigning WNBL champion Southside Flyers
It was brand new, and yet is was so very familiar. Sacked by Adelaide 36ers in August, Scott Ninnis was back where he belonged, on the sidelines of a basketball court. And his new team came to play.
The trademark grey business attire, spiked do and sideline strut of Scott Ninnis was back on the Adelaide hardwood as the twice-sacked former 36ers NBL coach began his WNBL reign with a victory that kept the Lightning’s season alive.
If there were any debut nerves, the familiar surroundings of Adelaide 36ers Arena — the old Clipsal Powerhouse where Ninnis played the majority of his 233 games for the Sixers — would have been a comfort to the 58-year-old.
Blindsided by his acrimonious August axing by the Sixers, Ninnis had intimated his days of drawing up plays might have been over.
But the coaching bug was evidently impossible to shake and the four-time Sixers NBL champion — two as player, two as coach — dived back in on Friday night, leading Adelaide to an 82-72 win over Southside, a little over a week after the Lightning parted ways with Nat Hurst.
The gesture rotation was a recognisable one for SA hoops diehards as Ninnis cycled between plenty of pensive crossed arms, hands on hips, an oftentimes furrowed brow, mixed in with shrugged shoulders, pleas with the referees and little claps of approval.
He urged his new charges to lock in on defence, get stops and get out and run, animatedly pointing at the cup to encourage pace and urgency against a Southside squad that leaks more points than any other team in the WNBL, save for the bottom-placed Canberra Capitals.
Adelaide entered the clash owner of a curious statistical symmetry that painted a polar opposite picture of its performance at each end of the floor.
Through nine games, the Lightning had held opponents to just 631 points as the WNBL’s most miserly defence. They’d also scored exactly that number at 70.1 per game, making Adelaide the least-potent attack in the league.
Not a month ago, the Lightning managed just 47 points for the entire game in an uninspiring 53-47 loss to Townsville.
Flash forward to Friday night against the defensively-challenged Flyers and, with a renewed vigour, desperation and pace under Ninnis — the sugar hit that often comes early on after a coaching change — the worst offensive team in the entire WNBL poured in 47 points … by the long break, the team’s highest first-half total of the season.
The explosion, which gives the Lightning a crucial split over the Flyers in the hunt for the top four, was built on a near triple-double from bronzed Paris Opal Steph Talbot, who poured in 13 of her 17 points in the first half, adding 10 rebounds and seven assists in one of her most-dominant performances since returning from a knee reconstruction.
Her young Opals running mate Izzy Borlase was right there with her, adding 15 points, while WNBA star Bri Turner joined Issie Bourne as the team’s leading scorer, both with 18, while adding 12 boards, four assists, three steals and five blocks in a tour de force that should only enhance her claim on the Defensive Player of the Year trophy.
The season-long perils of the Nine Now broadcast continued — at times, it appeared as if the vision was shot on a Nokia 5110 as it alternated in and out of focus — but Adelaide’s coolness as the clock ticked down was a game-winning feature that helped it withstand a 27-point heater from an on-fire Alice Kunek and a gaudy 18-point, 16-rebound double-double from import big Naz Hillmon.
Borlase ended the first quarter with a gorgeous fallaway in the lane with the leg kicked out that clunked off the iron but drew contact from Tayah Burrows. Borlase calmly potted both freebies to establish a five-point lead at the first break.
A Tera Reed trey with 28 seconds left in the half cut the Lightning lead to two, but Borlase was having none of it, beating the buzzer with a halftime triple of her own to ensure the margin at the beginning of the second was the same at the long break.
The Flyers closed the gap to just two with 41 seconds left in the third but reserve Georgia Pineau made two straight buckets, including a lay-up with one second left to take a six-point break into the fourth.
The scoring for both teams dried up in the last, but the Lightning maintained the rage to give Ninnis the perfect opening to a coaching stint that, like the club itself, is yet to be guaranteed beyond the end of this season.
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