REGARDED as one of the best shooters in the world, Caitlin Bassett needs very little introduction. With 102 test caps, two netball World Cup championships, a gold medal and 13 years experience under her belt, Bassett is famous for her strong hold style and accuracy in the ring.
In a move that shocked the netball community, the Australian Diamonds captain made the somewhat controversial decision to leave the Suncorp Super Netball League (SSN) for the ANZ Premiership. Signing on with Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic for the 2021 season with a possibly to extend that contract into 2022, Bassett will combine with Chiara Semple and Khiarna Williams to round out Magic’s shooting end.
The introduction of the Super Shot to the SSN 2020 season was quite literally the game changer for Bassett, who is world renowned for her close range shooting – not her long.
What started off as just being benched during the Power Play – the last five minutes of every quarter when the Super Shot is initiated – soon turned into Bassett being benched for entire games. Overall, she only played in nine out of 14 games with the GIANTS for the 2020 season.
Having this limited court time meant Bassett’s statistics suffered drastically. Bassett shot 192 goals at 87 percent accuracy, and was only able to accrue 177.5 Nissan Net Points (NNP) for the entire season. To put this into perspective, Vixens shooter Mwai Kumwenda made 100 NNP in the 2020 Grand Final alone.
Bassett’s height is a massive advantage for her. Standing at 196 centimetres tall, she easily towers over most of her opponents. This has both its advantages and disadvantages. Obviously an advantage is that she can reach for high balls, collect rebounds and be able to get almost any lob pass thrown her way.
But this is a double-edged sword. Because of her height, she is not especially agile like some of the smaller shooters, meaning she relies a lot on these lob passes over the top. Once you get taller defenders, this does not always work.
As the first Australian Diamond to make the move to the ANZ Premiership league, all eyes will be on Bassett, and it is expected that she will be in the starting line-up for Magic come round one of the season. Hopefully she will be able to get more time on the court, and serve as a mentor for some of the younger players on the team, in particular Williams.
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