Suns go joint top of WBBL Championship

Photo Credit: Mansoor Ahmed

Sevenoaks Suns are heading into the international break joint-top of the WBBL Championship table as one of three teams with an unbeaten record. Sevenoaks joined London Lions and Sheffield Hatters on 5-0 at the summit of the WBBL Championship, after using a huge fourth quarter to pull away from Caledonia Pride in a previously tight game on aturday afternoon, winning 74-53 as Cat Carr posted her sixth double-double in seven games and Julia Koppl scored her 500th WBBL point in a great overall showing of 15 points, seven rebounds, six assists and three blocks.

It was just a one-point game midway through the third quarter when Suns – currently the best defence in the WBBL – held their hosts scoreless for four minutes while Carr scored consecutively in a 9-0 spell that pushed the lead out to 49-39. Pride got back to within two shots, but Suns saw the game out with a big 17-2 surge in the decisive fourth quarter, as Koppl scored six and Judit Fritz hit five of her game-high 16 points, on 7-9 (77%) shooting, sending the lead through twenty points at 72-49.

Meanwhile, Carr has picked up the Molten WBBL Player of the Month award for September/October. Carr is the reigning Molten WBBL Player of the Season after winning the WBBL Championship with Suns last season, and has had an extraordinary start to this campaign. She has already featured in the weekly All-Star 5 an astonishing five weeks in a row, and has posted four double-doubles and a triple-double in six games so far.

The latter came in Suns’ last game as she put up 22 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds in a defeat of Nottingham Wildcats, including a series of key scores and assists in the second half as they overturned a halftime deficit to stay unbeaten, winning 80-69. And that triple-double had been coming, as she had been consistently on the verge of it in the preceding weeks, including a monstrous 29 points, 17 rebounds and nine assists in a Cup victory over Essex Rebels, and 16 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists in a league win over Oaklands Wolves.

So far, she is averaging 20 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists per game, shooting 38% from the three-point line. Unsurprisingly, she is the only player who features in the top ten in the WBBL Championship for points (3rd), assists (2nd), and rebounds (4th), let alone the top five, and she has also played more minutes than any other player and leads the way in free-throw percentage, having made 14 of her first 15 at the line.