PORTLAND was not at its best in their Country Basketball League women’s match against Warrnambool on Saturday, going down 86-61 in what was a disappointing outcome for the side.

The Coasters kept the game reasonably close in the first quarter, trailing by just six points at the first interval, however, a 23-12 second quarter for the Mermaids proved telling.

Warrnambool was unstoppable from three-point range, draining 19 shots from long range, with Paiyton Noonan having 10 of them.

Portland coach Ellen Zeunert conceded it was far from her side’s best performance and added that there are plenty of areas for improvement which came out of it.

“It certainly was not one of our better games… but to give credit to Warrnambool they played a great game and shot at an exceptionally high percentage,” Zeunert said.

“When you give up 19 threes it’s going to be tough to stay in the game… we simply shouldn’t have been giving them as many looks as we did.

“It comes down to better communication, and also more intensity on defence… once we dropped back to our zone, we didn’t spread enough which allowed them to keep getting open shots.”

These defensive issues bled into the offence as well, as the team wasn’t able to get out and run in transition like they normally would, as they were time and again collecting the ball out of their own net.

“It was frustrating… we didn’t get the opportunities to get down the court quickly like we would like to,” Zeunert said.

“I just think it led to a bit of a slack tempo for us… our ball movement wasn’t as sharp as we would like it to be, which hurt us as well.

“We were just a little off-beat all game.”

The silver lining is that Zeunert along with her playing group know that they were far from their best in this one, which simply means there’s plenty of upside and room for improvement.

This is especially true given the lack of experience and time to build chemistry that the team has had, with Zeunert saying their best is going to come from practicing and playing together more.

“We need some more sessions at practice to do some full-court style scrimmages and get the girls used to playing under pressure,” she said.

“It’s one thing to do it in a slow-paced controlled environment where you’re going through the motions, it’s another thing to do it under pressure in a game situation, and we need to get experience doing the latter.”