The Cootamundra Cougars showed they can compete, despite coming away from last weekend's under 16 state championships without a win.
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Drawn in the same pool as Coffs Harbour, Penrith and the metropolitan league's top side Manly, the Cougars competed in all three of their pool matches.
"We achieved we wanted to achieve, we wanted to compete," coach Keiran Purvis said.
It's something all the country teams struggled with, we're just not not used to high intensity in your face basketball
- Kieran Purvis
In their first game against Penrith went down by 19 points.
"They are an extremely fast side and can knock down the outside shots," Purvis said.
"It didn't matter really what we did, they rarely ever missed.
"At half time we where pretty equal with them but ran out of legs, they had a full bench, we had seven, which was a challenge."
Cootamundra's star Amelia Hassett scored 37 points in the game proving a handful for the opponents who were extremely strong defensively.
"At one time we were struggling to bring the ball up because their defence intensity was way above what we were used to," he said.
In their second match the Cougars came up against Manly, going down by just 14 points after a slow start
"We take a while to get into our games and used to the defence the metro teams provided," Purvis said.
"It's something all the country teams struggled with, we're just not not used to high intensity in your face basketball."
The Cougars weren't aided in the match by foul trouble which restricted their use of the bench.
In their final pool match the Cougars went down to Coffs Harbour by just three points in a game that could have gone either way.
"We had the opportunity to take that game out, when it came to the end it is always the team that trains the most and plays every weekend that is going to win that type of game," Purvis said.
What the championships showed, Purvis believes, is that the Cougars "are actually a talent and would be better if we could train and play more together".
"People were wondering where Coota was, we achieved showing people we are from country and came out scared you.
They had to compete to beat us," Purvis said.
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