The OneFortyOne Pioneers women suffered a heartbreaking defeat on Saturday night to crash out of the NBL1 South conference finals series.


The Pioneers hosted Waverley at Wulanda for the preliminary final, but were outclassed by a determined Falcons side, going down 73-92.


Waverley made it nine straight wins on Saturday night, having worked their way up from seventh on the ladder to take on the fourth placed Pioneers.


The Pioneers kept the crowd standing in the opening two minutes of play, before captain Isabella Brancatisano opened the home side’s account.


The sides traded baskets to be 6-all before Brancatisano found range from outside to open up a three point lead, as the Pioneers jumped ahead by five half way through the quarter.


The Falcons rallied to draw level at 13-all, before Sherrie Calleia and Brancatisano found the basket from outside to push in front.


Waverley surged again in the last two minutes of play, outscoring Mount Gambier – 6-2 to finish the first quarter up 27-23.


The Falcons opened the scoring in the second term, before Calleia again found range from outside to reduce the deficit to three.


Waverley hit back to back threes in the space of 60 seconds to get ahead by nine and stop the Pioneers’ run, prompting head coach Matt Sutton to call a time out to disrupt the visitors’ roll.


The ploy seemingly worked and the sides resumed trading baskets, with neither able to get on a run and the Pioneers headed into half time down by nine, 37-46.


The real damage was done in the third quarter, with the Falcons outscoring Mount Gambier by 10.


Waverley steadily pulled away from the Pioneers, holding the hosts to 18 points for the quarter while scoring 28 in return to be up 74-55 at the last break.


Mount Gambier matched it with the Falcons in the final quarter, however the deficit was too big to reel in.


The Pioneers managed to get back within 15 points with just under three minutes left on the clock, but they were met with steely determination from Waverley who kept them at bay and reasserted their lead to take the win 92-73, ending Mount Gambier’s finals campaign.


Zitina Aokuso top-scored for the Pioneers with 23 points and 12 rebounds, with Brancatisano and Calleia both contributing 17.


Head coach Matt Sutton said his side had been defeated by a strong team that had really come to play on the night.


“They are exceptional, they are the form team at the moment, they have size and the core has been together for quite some time,” he said.


“We were up against it, they thoroughly deserved to win.


“I thought they had a really good game plan, their coach did a good job, I felt that we underachieved in some areas that we expected to achieve in, some of that was them and some of that was our discipline.”


Sutton said while his side had remained in the contest for the first half, the damage was really done in the third quarter.


“Definitely in the third quarter we had some defensive breakdowns which led to some scoring for them, we could not get points on the board and it went from us being in a reachable position to being out of reach very quickly,” he said.


“We certainly never expected that, we expected we were going to have a good performance and win, not lose like that.


“They deserved to win.”


Sutton said, despite the loss, his players would take plenty of positives out of the season.


“We are disappointed it finished so soon, we felt like at times it was really high, at times really low, so we put ourselves in a position of a home prelim which was good, we just did not capitalise,” he said.


“The girls are understandably a little disappointed, it is very raw at the moment, it will take some time to come to terms with, but overall they should be proud of their season.


“We will review the season just gone, try to retain the pieces that we can and get into recruiting and developing our younger players.


“We had some really good growth across the board with the younger players, the level they were able to produce at training as they got older was higher, across the season it was really quite pleasing.


“I feel proud of the season, but I feel really disappointed the way it ended and for some of the low points, but I feel really motivated for how we can be bigger and stronger for 2025.”


Waverley will now meet Keilor in this weekend’s grand final, after the Thunder proved too strong for the in-form Ballarat Miners, downing them 96-75.