MATCH PREVIEW | Severn Stars vs Saracens Mavericks (NSL Rd 15)
Saracens Mavericks Centre Indya Masser has challenged her side to maximise their opportunities against Severn Stars on Friday night.
Mavericks showed glimpses of real form again last weekend against Manchester Thunder, before ultimately slipping to defeat.
Masser wants her side to make better use of the opportunities that their defenders have been presenting to them.
“We’ve hit the ground running this week in training. We’ve been working really hard on minimising our errors and rewarding the turnovers that our defenders have been getting. It’s all about maximising our transition across the court and really taking advantage of those opportunities we get.”
This match will be the final away game of the season and three in a row. Whilst Masser admitted to their being challenges with the timetable of fixtures, she explained how the time on the road had been really important for team bonding.
“Having three away games in a row has been tough. We’ve been on the road a lot, but Worcester isn’t too far for us to travel this week. It hasn’t affected the camp too much and we’ve actually really enjoyed the team bonding time we’ve had together for the last couple of games. We’re looking forward to seeing some of our supporters there as well.”
Stars are currently holding onto fourth place in the standings and Masser wants her side to put them under as much pressure as they can on Friday night.
“We want to minimise the errors this week. When we make turnovers, we need to capitalise on those and we want to punish the sides we play for every turnover, every dropped ball and every error during the game. We want to take that in our stride and convert the chances into goals.”
Mavericks suffered a narrow defeat last time these two sides faced each other but she feels that her side have come on leaps and bounds since that match, hoping they can put some of their recent training improvements onto the court tomorrow evening.
“It feels like so long ago that we last played Stars, but we’ve learnt a lot and developed a lot since then. We’re missing a few players, but I feel that we can really capitalise on the improvements we’ve been making in training. We want to put out a strong performance on court and really show what we’ve been developing and working on behind the scenes.”
