Women’s Korisliiga playoffs – thoughts
Round 1 – surprises?
Pairing for the playoffs are as follows : ToPo (1) – BC Nokia (8) / PeKa (2) – HBA (7) / Kouvottaret (3) – EBT (6) / Honka (4) – Pyrintö (5)
With the first games completed last night in Tapiola, let’s look at how the playoffs tipped-off in the Best of 5 series of quarter finals in Naisten Korisliiga.
Biggest surprise on paper was the win for the 8th seed BC Nokia over ToPo in Helsinki on Tuesday evening, but when you look at the ToPo roster and see the Carmen Tyson-Thomas was missing, you knew it was not going to be a walk in the park. But the fact that BC Nokia kept ToPo on 45 points and scored 85 in return THAT was a surprise. From a neutral point of view it was great to see an upset in right in the first game.
Lot in this series will depend on whether Tyson-Thomas returns to the roster – no information at least for me about the reason for her absence (injury, personal reasons??) so could not even speculate on the possible return.
Second seed PeKa took care of business with a 30 point win over HBA in the opening game, which was on par with the results of earlier meetings this season. At the moment can’t see much else than a 3-0 series win for PeKa – but can accept that I might be wrong!
Third seed Kouvottaret who have been touted as one of the main challengers for the title this playoff season, suffered a home defeat to the 6th seed EBT. Was this result of such a surprise? Probably not – EBT are a tough match-up for most teams with their style of play, and with some of exciting youth talent in their roster – the energy and pace is ‘poison’ to many teams in the league.
EBT had the game in control most of the 40 minutes, only allowing the hosts to get with-in touching distance in the end – game 02 in Espoonlahti on Thursday will be one to watch for sure.
The series, which based on league positions, should have been the closest one – was not.
Tapiolan Honka ran away with the game on Wednesday from the tip-off and never looked back, but when your opponent is missing two key players (and minimum 40 point combined) – that is what you expect. Emma Lampen was top scorer – and I was about to say ‘on fire’ from behind the arc…. but then I checked the box score 😉 But still – a super game by her!
Pyrintö gave Korisliiga debuts (as far as I can see from the Korisliiga stats pages!!) to two players – shows and tells something of the injuries they are having when you put two rookies for their first games in quarter-finals and give them almost 20 minutes of game time! Both rookies had stellar games and showed they belong to this level ..
What next?
Round two of games start already today (Thursday) – so no time to rest.
All series, surprisingly, are 1-0 for the winners of the opening games.. after the second round of games we will all be that little bit wiser as we see which way the pendulum starts to swing in each series.
