The Spirit were forced to dig deep against a pesky Lightning team that has caused more than it fair share of headaches during Pritchard's two-year tenure as coach.

Adelaide scored wins in two of three games played between the clubs last season and almost added a third win at Bendigo Stadium on Saturday.

Reflecting on the game this week, Pritchard conceded the Spirit had their hands full with the Lightning's constant defensive changes.

"It's a real tribute to Adelaide that they played as hard and as tough as they did," he said.

"We were definitely under-prepared for their changes of defence, we probably could have spent more time on our zone stuff.

"But it wasn't so much the zone, it was the changes from zone to man-to-man that confused us a bit."

But Pritchard was adamant his team's ability to adapt to the zone would not be the difference between winning and losing a WNBL championship.

Instead focus will turn to improving other parts of the Spirit's game in time for Saturday's night's match against Dandenong Rangers, including limiting points from turnovers and his side's average free throw shooting.

The Spirit sunk just nine of 17 free throws for the match and one point were just one from seven.

Pritchard hoped the poor execution at the free throw line was more "a one-off event" than the early signs of a much larger problem.

"The girls each would have shot 100 free throws (Tuesday) morning, the same happened Monday morning," he said.

"They'll shoot another 100 or 200 before game day, so each of them will be close to 400 free throws before game day.

"You can't put much more volume into that and I'll do a whole lot of things to put them under pressure.

"Traditionally we've been a very good free throw team, so I am hoping it's just an anomaly."

One area of the team's performance that won't be causing the head coach too many concerns is the performance of his bench.

Heather Oliver (15 points), Gabe Richards (nine), Blake Dietrick (five) and Ashleigh Spencer (four) combined for 33 points, the equal most of any WNBL team on the weekend.

Pritchard has stated his desire to pick-up a minimum 25-points from his bench each week, which is contributing some healthy rivalry among players.

Centre Gabe Richards is a certainty to return to the starting line-up at some point as she increases match-fitness, but Pritchard hinted there could be more changes depending on how things pan out.

"Thirty three (points) is a big tick for round one and what it does is make you question should we have a different starting line-up," he said.

"We'll revisit that often, but you also need to look at the match-ups with Dandenong - it's not just about the point production, it's how do we match up to defend.

"It's a good problem to have player like Ollie playing so well."

The Spirit host Dandenong this Saturday night at Bendigo Stadium. Tip-off is at 7pm.