THE Portland Coasters hunt for back-to-back Country Basketball League’s South West women’s conference championships will culminate tomorrow evening, when the team take to their home court against Millicent Magic for the biggest game of their season.

The Coasters won seven games in the regular season, to finish top of the table, an improvement on last season’s second-place finish.

Coasters captain Heidi Jones said that she and the team were eagerly awaiting the chance to defend their CBL title.

“I’m so pumped that grand final week is here, and the entire team is so excited for it as well,” she said.

“We’ve been training hard this past couple of weeks, and I feel the team is really coming together at the perfect time.

“We’ve gelled so much in the last couple of games and have really been doing well with our team-game.”

Coach Rebel Noter said the shortened season had kept the league competitive throughout the year and pushed the Coasters women to always be at their best.

“It's been such a close season for all the teams this year, there are always going to be some teams that you match up well against,” he said.

“Colac were the only team that knocked us over through the season, but they narrowly missed the top four and missed out on the finals.

“Even in the other semi-final, there was only a couple of points between Millicent and Mount Gambier for most of that game.

“It can be tough to ensure the team are gelling with everything in a shorter season, but they’ve all done extremely well in this short period.”

The Coasters team didn’t rely on a single scorer to get the job done – Alana Strom was the team’s highest scorer for the season with 111 points from her nine games.

Possessing scoring weapons across all five positions, the Coasters can turn to any of their players to make an impact on the scoreboard, from long range or from within the key.

Strom’s highest score of 22 points came in the season’s opening match and Millie Jennings also surpassed the 20-point mark with 21 in that same game, while versatile wing Tyleah Barr scored her season high of 22 in the Coasters final regular season match.

Jones said the team’s adaptability and even scoring ability held them in good stead when playing intense finals games.

“A few other teams around the league have to turn to one or two of their players to do the majority of the scoring, but that’s not the way we play,” she said.

“Our scoring comes from across the entire court and nearly everyone who sees the court is scoring each and every game.

“There aren’t too many teams around who have the same level of experience as some of our team, there are a lot of teams that have a fair few younger players.

“I think that experience will be important for us come Saturday.”

Much of the Coasters success was built on the defensive side of the court, a tenacious team press that forces oppositions into rushed passes and the ability to match the physicality of whichever side they come up against.

Noter said that the side’s focus was ensuring they kept their opponents to a low total, which would be key once again tomorrow.

“We’re a defensive minded team, but we also have a team where everyone can and does contribute to winning,” he said.

“Millicent’s Poppy Venn is someone we need to keep close to, she’s been the league’s top scorer this season.

“We just need to stick to our jobs and ensure we hold our defensive structures for the whole game.”

Jones said their coach had confidence in every Coasters player’s ability to defend, no matter the matchup.

“Rebel is always telling us that we are defensively like-for-like, we always have the adaptability to switch on the fly,” she said.

“We know that teams like Millicent love to run hand-off plays, so we just need to get around those handoffs or just switch it if we can’t get through it.

“I’m expecting Millicent to bring some pretty tough physicality, but I also think that both times that we beat them we didn’t exactly play our best basketball against them.”

Noter said the entire town had got behind the Coasters teams this year and praised the tireless efforts of Portland Basketball Association.

“It’s a very exciting time before this game, and it’s great to have the final back in Portland after some time,” he said.

“Portland Basketball Association have done really well this year and have been hard at work ahead of the grand final, especially Geordie Cook who has been working out all the details and things for us.

“We’ve got the home supporters on our side at our home court so it would have been amazing to have both sides in this weekend.”

Tomorrow evening’s game sold out in under 30 minutes, and Jones said she and the Coasters were hoping the home supporters would bring as much energy and noise as they could.

“It’s pretty epic that we get the chance to play this game on our home court, and it was amazing to see that the match sold out 10 minutes after the tickets went up,” she said.

“Portland’s men’s team will be there to support once again, they’ve shown us a lot of support in the last few games that we’ve played.

“We get a lot of support from the people around Portland, and we’re hoping that the crowd is cheering us on nice and loud once again this weekend.”