Lauren Jackson broke the Albury Wodonga Bandits women's point-scoring record in racking up a half century in NBL1 on Saturday night.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
The seven-time WNBL championship winner posted 50 points in the 120-72 away win over Canberra.
"Lauren had 21 points and nine rebounds in the first quarter, she was on and we kept feeding the hot hand," coach Sam McDonald offered.
Jackson finished with 19 rebounds as the visitors set the win up in the first quarter with a 22-point lead.
Coincidentally, the player the four-time Olympian beat for the individual record - Unique Thompson (49 in 2022) - was starting her first game for the season and picked up where she left off after claiming the league title in 2022 with 21 points and eight rebounds.
"Unique settled in really well and Ash Hannan continued her run of form with 22 (points) and six (rebounds) and that was in just 20 minutes, so that was awesome," McDonald praised.
"Mikayla Pivec controlled the game so well, 12 points and 19 assists, which is one of the better performances I've seen, distributing the ball."
The Bandits backed up the win with an 86-73 victory over Basketball Australia's Centre of Excellence on Sunday.
Jackson was unavailable with illness, but Thompson recorded a triple double with 30 points, 22 rebounds and 11 steals, while Pivec (17 points) and Liz Murphy (16 points) also made strong contributions.
"Liz slotted into the starting lineup, her defence is really improving and against CoE, that's something we had to focus on and Liz did a fantastic job in defence and then transitioned into offence really well," McDonald explained.
"A lot of teams seem to think we can't win games without Lauren Jackson, so it was really good as a team to get that against a quality CoE side, they don't back down.
"That was a big focus for us, fight fire with fire, we took it to them and they tried to assert their physicality and we went right back at them."
The Bandits win came on the back of their worst team shooting for the season (34 per cent), while it was an outstanding 61 per cent the previous night.
The club will be without Jackson for the next two weekends as she travels to China with Australian Opals.
The ladder leaders (11-0) will host 13th-placed Penrith on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Bandits men dropped three places after successive losses.
Second-placed Canberra proved too strong on Saturday night with a 94-76 win.
The visitors' Davo Hickey was superb with a triple double of 27 points, 17 rebounds and 10 assists.
On Sunday, CoE claimed a 96-83 win with a host of Bandits in double figures, including Mitch Dance and Hickey with 18 and 16 points respectively.
The Bandits are now sixth with a seven-four record.
