Super Friday women’s basketball

Bumper day of top women’s basketball!

Finnish Basketball League/Association had built a pretty great Easter Friday for fans of Women’s basketball.

Three games, three BIG games …

At 12.00 – Honka II – Puhuttaret – Women’s 1st Division Final – Game 03 (decider!)

At 15.00 – Honka – EBT – Women’s Korisliiga Bronze medal game

At 18.30 – ToPo – PeKa – Women’s Korisliiga Finals – Game 01

The first two games were at HonkaHalli in Tapiola and the last one at Kisahalli (a.k.a The Museum) in Helsinki. The 1st Division final was a free entry event, and the Women’s Final had lots of outdoor activities for kids and free hot dogs for everyone who entered the game.

Unfortunately I missed out on the hot dog as I entered through the press entry….

Honka II – Puhuttaret

This one was for the title!

Series was 1-1- and so the series went to the deciding third game

Opening 10 minutes was testing and feeling out the game, on the second quarter the home team seemed to get the edge in the game with a strong run and headed to the locker room with a seven point lead.

Puhuttaret started to make a comeback on the third – before really taking control of the game in the last 10 minutes to take the title and start the celebrations!

Top scorers for Puhuttaret were Elina Mäntynen, Mona Winter and Heli Suvanto. Suvanto also recorded the only double-double of the game as she added ten boards to her 15 points.

For the home team Honka, Mette Nurminen was the only player to reach double-digits, and Heli Lehto came one short.

The game – from behind the camera lens – was great, the play flowed nicely, it was fast, plenty of contact – and tons of emotions on the bench and on the court. With the free entry to the game as well, the Tapiolan Urheilutalo was pretty packed with fans who kept good noise all through out the game.

Winners of the 1st Division do have the chance of promotion to the Naisten Korisliiga – but in Finland the teams have to announce their intention for possible promotion in midseason. And Puhuttaret (as far as I know) did not want to apply for a place in Korisliiga in case they won the 1st Division.

But I will publish a longer article about 1st Division to Korisliiga – with opinions from coaches and players on this – as they know more of the ins-and-outs of this.

Wild celebrations from Puhuttaret in the locker room after the game – and also, note to teams… when the championship is on the line… DO PACK SOME GOOD SCISSORS !!!! So many years have I seen players struggling to cut off the net.. so please, think of your players and get some proper scissors in the bag!!

Honka-EBT – Bronze medal game

I mean, how short can I keep this??

There is no disrespect meant when I say this, but it really looked like only one team showed up to play on the day… and this after I chatted to one Honka player before the game and she said to be ‘ I have a feeling this is going to be a great game…’

This game was over in … I don’t know, 5 minutes??

I had written down EBT as my ‘Team of the Season’ in the previous post here, and this performance made the case even stronger. Opening 10 minutes went 25-9 to EBT – and even that slightly flattered the home team ..

Often it is said that Bronze medal is won by the team that ‘wants it most’ – and I am not saying that Honka did not want to win the medal, I am sure they did. But EBT really were in the mood for getting that medal and ending the season with a win.

Nicole Ogun leading the scoring (19 points) and boards (14 rebounds), with Venla Määttänen, Sanni Tuomisto and Erika Mace putting up double digit scores as well.

Game for EBT to remember, and for Honka to try and forget ..and seeing the Honka players leave the venue after the game – it did show on their faces that this was NOT the way they wanted the season to end..

EBT players were still on the court half an hour after the game taking selfies and doing TikTok videos (or whatever the young ones do these days 😉 )

ToPo-PeKa – Final Game 01

If this game was a movie or book, and someone would ask me to come up with the title for it.

The Game 01 of Naisten Korisliiga Finals would be : THE ANGRY GAME

Not sure if it was that both teams had some extra charge after both cruising their way to the Finals or what – but there seemed to be many ‘angry’ players on the court .. the joy of playing basketball was well hidden from the players faces in this game.

But yea, it was quite strange to see players I sort of know from years of covering them – looking quite this hostile in a game .. now I am always calling for more emotions on the court .. but maybe this was just a tad over what I have been thinking.

Game itself – really, what one expects when two of the best teams of the season meet and play in the Finals – nervous, easy mistakes, extra physical …

This was my third game of the day – so my brain started to already have a bit of an overload of basketball ( note – I am no Kristian Palotie who can probably watch 10 games of basketball in a row 😉 ). So don’t really have too much to say ..

ToPo once again got the 20+ points from Carmen Tyson-Thomas, Taru Tuukkanen in her last 3-5 games of her career added 15 on the board, Magdalene Agyei despite being in foul trouble made 16 points and the X-factor of the game was Anna Gardziella with 10 points – out of which eight came at crucial stage of the game.

For PeKa – Lauren Heard was the main scoring threat with 19 points – Anissa Pounds had a solid game, but few other players might feel like the would have liked to contribute few more points to the board.

Walking away from the game, you felt like maybe.. just maybe ToPo was still the team that had more room to improve their performance. PeKa looked to be playing ‘OK’ – but ToPo had their game looking disjointed at times, but their game is so different to any other team in Naisten Korisliiga – that even with an 80% performance they can be better than their opponents.

Game 02 in Kotka on Monday – will show a lot which way this series will head.

Oh, and the score – ToPo took the game 76-73 ..so lead the series 1-0 (three wins needed)

Added note : Pregame predictions on courtside with Leversport (go and give them a follow on Instagram!!! @leversport ) .. my prediction was 8 point win for PeKa and hers was 12 point with for ToPo .. so respect for guessing/predicting the winning team correctly!!