Adelaide Lightning coach Chris Lucas hailed his side's character and ability to step up when faced with adversity after his team produced a miracle 74-73 win in Game 2 of the WNBL grand final series against the Canberra Capitals.
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Behind 1-0 in the series, the Lightning trailed the Caps at every change and were down by a point with 5.5 seconds remaining before Nicole Seekamp - from Lauren Nicholson's assist - scored a sensational match winner on the fulltime buzzer to force a series decider at the AIS Arena on Saturday.
Whenever challenged this season, whether it be Nicholson's broken nose in the semi-final against Melbourne, Kayla Alexander's knee injury early or the news in November that the club faced extinction, the Lightning have responded resoundingly.
"This group all year has shown tremendous character," Lucas said.
"We've had a bit of adversity with some illness and injuries, as have all teams.
"Every time we've gone through that, we've just stepped up to the plate. I couldn't be more proud of the group."
The normally restrained Lucas jumped out of his seat when Seekamp slotted the sealer, the end result much better than the nervy lead-up with a possible travel or double dribble violation on Nicholson missed.
"I made a decision to take (centre) Kayla (Alexander) out and go small to get it down there as quickly as possible and run a step-up screen," Lucas said.
"We didn't quite get the step-up screen, we got a couple of fumbles and it fell loose.
"She misses that and it's not our win and we're disappointed. It fell into her hands and she made it."
Having snapped the red-hot Capitals' 12-game winning streak, the Lightning, bidding for their first title since 2008, now have the task of repeating the dose in Canberra's backyard in Game 3.
"We'll walk into an extremely hostile environment but I can tell you one thing, we've learnt from last weekend (Game 1 loss)," Lucas said.
"If we get another 4000-5000 people there on the weekend that's a pretty amazing grand final series for the women's game."
Australian Associated Press
