Joey Mausar is part of a young Altona team on the rise in the Big V basketball. 83147_18 Picture: DAMIAN VISENTINI
By LIAM TWOMEY
THE Altona Division One Men’s Big V Basketball side may have been looking into the future last week.
The Gators took on Werribee in round 13 competition, and after leading throughout the first half were overrun late in the match.
Rewind the clock back one year and it was a young Werribee side which was leading against more highly fancied opponents but didn’t have the experience to go on to win.
Twelve months later the Devils are on top of the ladder and pushing for a championship.
With an abundance of highly talented young players the Gators will be hoping to take a similar path to the top in the future.
“I think it comes down to experience. We have got some younger guys that have come up so this is their first year playing at this level,” coaching co-ordinator Randy Shanklin said.
“So their experience or lack of experience has really hurt us in a couple of situations.”
Altona currently has a 4-11 win/loss record for the season but has been competitive in a number of other games.
Shanklin believes a key to the side posting more wins is closing the gap between their best and worst.
“One week we played Sunbury who were below us on the ladder and we lost by 15 but the next day we played Hawthorn and beat them by 20 on their home floor and it’s very hard to win over there,” he said.
“The group just seems to play with a little bit more desperation sometimes.
“The younger guys are really emotional. So a lot of the time something will go bad and that is usually the turning point in the game. They might be winning a game and then something goes wrong and all of a sudden the emotions get involved and they take it as a personal blow and we aren’t able to recover. We just don’t have the mental toughness at this point.”
Junior players seem to be the future for Altona with both the men’s and women’s youth league teams flying so far this season.
The women sit on top of the ladder with only one loss for the year and the men are also in the top four.
After working hard on developing junior talent for a number of years the Gators are rapt with the exciting players coming through.
“What we have coming through in youth league is very promising,” Shanklin said.
“It is just starting really this year. We have had older teams in the past and this is really the first year that we have had the influx of kids coming through in the men’s team. I think in the women’s we will see that more next year.”
