Malawi National Netball Team top shooter, Mwawi Kumwenda, continued with her excellent form in Australia\u2019s Suncorp Super Netball on Saturday when she top-scored for her club, Melbourne Vixens, in a narrow 56-55 loss to Sunshine Coast Lightning in the competition\u2019s major semifinal.<\/p>\n
Mwawi converted 33 out of 38 attempts while her teammate, Tegan Phillip, scored 22 times.<\/p>\n
Lightning\u2019s Caitlin Bassett emerged top scorer in the match with 44 goals from 47 attempts at 94 per cent accuracy.<\/p>\n
The result means Vixens will be forced to take the long road to secure a berth in the Super Netball Grand Final.<\/p>\n
Vixens had everything in their favour- hot lead-in form, home crowd, a big win over Lightning at the same venue in their last meeting and looked to have the match in their control when they opened a five-goal lead early in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
But they were unable to find answers for the offensive onslaught from towering Lightning spearhead Bassett, who propelled her team to the win on the back of a dominant haul.<\/p>\n
The victory sends the Lightning straight into a home Grand Final in Brisbane in two weeks.<\/p>\n
Having earned the double-chance, Vixens must now prevail in a home preliminary final on Saturday night if they are to get the chance to feature in the decider for the inaugural Super Netball crown.<\/p>\n
The start was not as polished as the Vixens would have wanted, with some wild and errant passes into attack underlying the rise in pressure for a match with a spot in the Grand Final on the line.<\/p>\n
With Bassett firing, Lightning established a three-goal lead late in the opening term, but Vixens scored the last three goals through Mwawi to lock the scores at 13-13 at the first change.<\/p>\n
The combatants went goal for goal to start the second quarter before Vixens seized on a Lightning miss to capitalise at the other end and get the break.<\/p>\n
After hitting just the two goals in the opening quarter, Philip found her groove with eight goals in the second quarter to help steer Vixens to a 26-25 lead at the halftime break.<\/p>\n
Vixens lifted their game a gear in the third quarter to open a five-goal lead after the first six minutes, but by three-quarter time, Lightning had reduced the margin to two goals at the final change.<\/p>\n
Bassett continued to prove a headache for Vixens\u2019 defenders, who struggled to quell her influence under the ring as Lightning reeled in the lead and then quickly opened up a four-goal buffer.<\/p>\n
Three late goals from Mwawi cut the margin, but time was against a Vixens\u2019 resurgence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi National Netball Team top shooter, Mwawi Kumwenda, continued with her excellent form in Australia\u2019s Suncorp Super Netball on Saturday when she top-scored for her club, Melbourne Vixens, in a narrow 56-55 loss to Sunshine Coast Lightning in the competition\u2019s major semifinal. Mwawi converted 33 out of 38 attempts while her teammate, Tegan Phillip, scored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":45866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47773,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47769\/revisions\/47773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}