Townsville’s Abbey Ellis has produced one of the all-time great WNBL individual performances with a mammoth 47-point effort in the Fire’s 86-68 away win over Adelaide.<\/p>\n
The defending champions trailed 35-21 in the second quarter but outscored Adelaide 27-10 in the last term.<\/p>\n
They improved to 1-1 while Adelaide dropped to 0-2.<\/p>\n
Ellis kept her team afloat in the first half, scoring 25 of their first 33 points and their first 16 of the second quarter.<\/p>\n
Her club record individual score, eclipsing the 45 points by Chandi Jones in 2005, was the equal fifth-highest in WNBL history and the largest in 21 years.<\/p>\n
She joined league legends Lauren Jackson, Penny Taylor and Belinda Snell among the only players to record 47 points and six steals in a game.<\/p>\n
“It’s a pretty cool feeling,” Ellis said.<\/p>\n
She hit 16 of 24 from the field, nailing seven of 13 from three-point range.<\/p>\n
“Credit to our team, we used the ball really well and found the hot hand,” Ellis said.<\/p>\n
Townsville coach Shannon Seebohm said Ellis was one of the bravest players he had coached.<\/p>\n
“Abbey had probably one of the best games that I know I’ve ever seen In the WNBL, making huge shots, making big plays,” Seebohm said.<\/p>\n
“I said to her probably the thing I was most proud of her wasn’t all the scoring, [it was] that she was fighting as hard as she could and defending her butt off.”<\/p>\n
Adelaide led by seven at quarter-time and Townsville scored the last seven points of the second quarter to get within three at the half.<\/p>\n
As the game progressed, Townsville’s defence improved and Ellis got more scoring support from Courtney Woods (14) and German centre Marie Gulich (13).<\/p>\n
Alicia Froling grabbed 11 rebounds and Alexandra Fowler 10 to help Townsville collect 11 more boards.<\/p>\n
Adelaide were shooting at 62 per cent from the field at half-time, but that dropped to 45 per cent by the end, as they scored just 25 points after half-time.<\/p>\n
“We had a tough second half,” Lightning coach Aja Parham-Ammar said.<\/p>\n
Tayla Brazel led Adelaide’s offence with a personal WNBL career-high of 19, at 72 per cent from the field.<\/p>\n
Shay Ciezki tallied 13 points, Zitina Aokuso 12 and Opals star Steph Talbot had 11 and nine assists in her first game back from WNBA duties.<\/p>\n
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