MINDEN - It was a less than warm welcome home for the Douglas girls basketball team on Tuesday night.
Douglas had been on the road for 14 consecutive games, and a talented and athletic traveling club team from Melbourne, Australia was waiting for the Tigers when they took their home floor for the first time in more than a month.
The Nunawading Spectres raced out to a 14-3 lead and cruised to a 70-48 win in the Tigers' final tuneup before they open Sierra League play Friday night at North Valleys in Reno.
Nunawading was taller at nearly every position and took rank advantage of the height difference early on, working the ball inside for a number of baskets. The Spectres also ran the floor extremely well and built a 27-11 first-quarter lead.
"You get down like that early, it takes a lot of energy to fight back into it," Douglas coach Werner Christen said.
But that's exactly what the Tigers did.
Douglas switched to a low 1-3-1 defense in the second and proceeded to go on an 11-4 run to close the gap to 36-25. Erin Brinkmeyer hit two of her three 3-pointers on the night as Douglas outscored Nunawading 16-13 in the quarter.
"We switched up our defense and took a couple of gambles," Christen said. "We packed that 1-3-1 in on their big girls and that helped us out."
Douglas did a respectable job of moving the ball around and creating open looks against the bigger Spectres, and also found ways to get to free throw line, scoring 21 of its 48 points on free throws.
Brinkmeyer led all scorers in the game with 23 points. Brittany Puzey added nine, Monica Knight added six and Tammy Gough and Bridget Maestretti put up four points each, all on free throws.
Douglas had a couple of small runs in the third quarter and again closed the gap to 11 at 47-36 in the third quarter.
"I was real proud of the girls," Christen said. "That could have been an 80 or 90-point game but they really just hang in there.
"Offensively, we missed some easy shots again, but with the looks we were getting, it was hard to be disappointed. We did a good job of moving the ball around. We had five-straight possessions where we stopped them but we just couldn't convert. They were impressive."
Nunawading had five players finish in double figures with two at 12, two at 11 and one at 10.
"They were quick, good athletes," Christen said. "This is their offseason and they've got quite a nice lineup of players put together there."
Nunawading next heads to Las Vegas and then to Washington D.C., and to Duke University before winding up in Hawaii.
Douglas next heads to North Valleys on Friday for a 5:15 p.m. game.
"North Valleys has a great team this year, they are playing well and playing with confidence," Christen said. "They are very dangerous and we'll have our hands full, so we'll see."
Joey Crandall can be reached at jcrandall@recordcourier.com or at (775) 782-5121, ext. 212.
