Melton is through to the men’s Big V basketball division 1 grand final after a brilliant performance against Shepparton on Saturday night.
Despite being forced to travel for the away contest, the Thoroughbreds were at their brilliant best from the opening moments, controlling both ends of the court on the way to the 85-76 win over the conference premiers.
Melton coach Julie McCallum was full of praise for the way her side approached the match.
“It was awesome,” she said. “We put together almost four quarters.
“Our defensive effort was really good and we were able to shut them down. They started to implode.
“We had spoken a lot about our defensive effort and intensity and just working that little bit harder to get over the screens and fight for the ball.
“We really wanted it more than we did the last time we played them. The boys were pumped, they really came to play.”
Some outstanding shooting highlighted the opening term, with Melton making almost all their possessions count on the scoreboard.
The Thoroughbreds were converting at almost 50 per cent from the field and knocked down four three-pointers to push the lead to nine points.
There was no letting up on the pressure from there as Melton continued to do the little things right to extend the margin to 15.
With the result beyond doubt, Shepparton was able to add some respect to the scoreboard, winning the final term by six points. But it mattered little for Melton.
Shane Moroney was outstanding for the Thoroughbreds, scoring 25 points off the bench while Jeff Crowe scored 19.
“Shane was fantastic,” McCallum said.
“Every week he comes off the bench and he’s really too hard to guard. He did that again. He just went hard.
“Jeff did well, Cameron (McCallum) did well in the middle and Ivan (Harris) was good as well. It was an all-round team effort.”
Melton will now turn its attention to a best-of -three match grand final series against Latrobe City, which booked its place with a 22-point win over Geelong.
McCallum said there were a lot of similarities between her side and Latrobe.
“Latrobe is going to be really tough,” she said.
“Similar to us, they go deep. They have six or seven players who can really play.
“We can’t just focus on one or two. We have to go back and look at tapes and spend the week preparing for how we are going to shut down their key players.
“It will be really important that we get on top of them.”
The first match of the series will take place at Latrobe this week, with the rest of the series to be played at Melton.
