Team effort tops division

Dubbo basketball continues to punch well above it's weight with another impressing showing at last weekend's NSW Country Tournament.

Going up against the best teams in country NSW, Dubbo achieved some outstanding results with the under-12s girls the most successful side, being crowned winners in their division at Wollongong.

The coach of the under-12s girls, Tim Griffiths, said it was an effort the girls should be proud of, especially considering they were a Division 2 side which came up against teams ranked much higher than them early in the competition.

"They mixed divisions one and two together so we played a number of division one teams and we were beating Newcastle at halftime but the girls have never been in this type of competition so they just didn't have the experience," he said.

"The team has all the talent, they could be world beaters but they really learnt a lot."

That talent was evident as they finished top of Division 2 after the preliminary rounds and then wins over Maitland and Mossvale saw them crowned country champions with Amelia Raidaveta crowned Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the final with a game high 16 points.

Raidaveta was a standout all through the tournament but Griffiths said despite her incredible talents, it was a real team effort.

"She's a powerhouse just because of her physical size and she's also got a beautiful eye for basketball," he said of the MVP.

"But we would have been nowhere near as good without the increase in performance from the rest of the team. One player can make a difference in a match but it takes a team to win it."

Griffiths said his Dubbo side caught the attention of everyone over the course of the weekend, especially the highly talented Newcastle side.

Newcastle dominate their Eastern League with numerous wins of over 30 points but Griffiths knows his side matched them and outplayed them for long periods when they met early in the weekend.

"I know the coach of the Newcastle side fairly well and she was shocked to the core by our girls," he said.

"Given two weeks of games in that kind of competition these girls could not only match Newcastle, I think they knew they'd have a tough time defeating our girls."

As well as the local girls achieving great success, Dubbo had five other sides competing at Country Tournaments with the under-12s boys finishing as runners-up while the boys and girls under-14s, the girls under-16s and boys under-18s also impressed.

"The western teams are smaller and then we're going up against teams from Newcastle and Wollongong so for Dubbo to be able to compete with them is great," Griffiths said.

Griffiths and his under-12s side now turn their attention to August's State Championships.