BENDIGO Spirit will have their entire squad available for this weekend’s WNBL double header in Perth and Adelaide after new import Barbara Turner was cleared to make her debut.
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Turner, who arrived in Bendigo last week but missed Saturday’s 22 point win over Dandenong Rangers at Bendigo Stadium, gained her official visa clearance on Wednesday.
She will slot into a Spirit line-up riding a wave of confidence following consecutive wins against the highly-touted Melbourne Boomers and Dandenong to start the 2018-19 season.
Coach Simon Pritchard said Turner was itching to get her WNBL career started.
“We just need to find our way to use her strengths, but we are sure she is going to be a key playmaker,” he said.
“She will be very important for us in terms of attacking and creating offence … she’ll be pretty hard to contain.
“It will be interesting to see who Perth use on here because she is a pretty aggressive penetrator to the basket and a good three-point shooter.”
Turner, who was born and bred in Cleveland, Ohio, but now lives in Houston, Texas, joins the Spirit after a dozen impressive years in the Turkish national league.
Her addition pushes the roster-depth even deeper, a week after it was bolstered by Louella Tomlinson’s return from injury.
Tomlinson clocked in with 10 points and a rebound in a little under 10 minutes of court-time against the Rangers in a soild debut for her new club.
The Spirit left for Perth on Thursday afternoon and will meet the Lynx at 6.30pm Friday (local time).
Pritchard said an obvious threat for the Lynx was their import duo of Brittany McPhee and Asia Taylor, who combined for 53 points and 14 rebounds in a 98-88 win over Townsville Fire last Sunday.
“They will be very tough to defend, but they also have a lot of players who like to take three-point shots, so it’s going to be about long rebounds and guard rebounds,” he said.
“The ball is probably going to go over the heads of our big girls a lot of time, but our guards are going to fight for those scrappy, long rebounds.
“We need to make sure that if they are going to take a lot of three-shots, that they are contested shots. We need to have them under the pump.”
The Spirit will be hoping for further big games from their other import Becca Tobin, who has started the season brilliantly with a pair of WNBL Team of the Week nominations.
Pritchard expected the opposition focus on his centre would only grow as the good performances mounted, but insisted the American was prepared for the challenge.
“The more (game) video there is out of there, the more people are going to try and take things away from her game,” he said
“But we’re happy with how she has started and how she has fitted into the team so well.”
The Spirit take on Adelaide Lightning at 3pm on Sunday.