T&T goal-shoot­er Saman­tha Wal­lace-Joseph was a dom­i­nant fac­tor as she re­turned from a one-match pre­cau­tion­ary lay-off due to sore­ness to lead Lough­bor­ough Light­ning back to win­ning ways, 76-60, over Birm­ing­ham Pan­thers in the Eng­land Net­ball Su­per League (NSL) at the Coven­try Sky­Dome Are­na on Fri­day (May 8).

​The 32-year-old missed her team’s first de­feat of the sea­son in the pre­vi­ous round, a 75-71 ex­tra-time loss at the hands of the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons af­ter a 60-all score at the end of reg­u­la­tion time.

​The To­co-born Wal­lace-Joseph and her team­mates got off to a slow start and trailed 12-15 at the end of the first quar­ter be­fore nar­row­ing the deficit to 31-33 at the half­time in­ter­val.

​The third pe­ri­od proved to be the turn­ing point for the Light­ning as they turned up the tem­po and outscored the Pan­thers 23-11 to take a com­mand­ing ten-point lead in­to the fi­nal pe­ri­od, where they once again dom­i­nat­ed 22-16 to se­cure the 16-point vic­to­ry.

​Wal­lace-Joseph fin­ished with a com­bined 43 goals from 44 at­tempts, con­sist­ing of 33 goals from 34 at­tempts and five of ten Amex Su­per Shots. El­la Clark added 20 goals, which in­clud­ed three su­per shots from six at­tempts, and Berri Neil chipped in with 13 goals, in­clu­sive of two per­fect su­per shots.

​On the op­po­site side of the court, Bet­sy Creak had 41 com­bined goals for the Pan­thers, with 35 of 40 at­tempts and three of five su­per shots, while Sam­my Ngubane added 19 goals from 20 at­tempts.

​The win lift­ed Light­ning, who have al­ready qual­i­fied for the semi­fi­nals, to 31 points from 11 match­es. They sit three ahead of Man­ches­ter Thun­der, who de­feat­ed Lon­don Pulse 64-52 in their top-of-the-ta­ble bat­tle yes­ter­day to join Pulse and Light­ning as qual­i­fiers for the Soft & Gen­tle play­offs. The play­offs will com­prise a ma­jor semi­fi­nal, a mi­nor semi­fi­nal, a pre­lim­i­nary fi­nal, and the Grand Fi­nal on June 20.

​With the loss, Lon­don Pulse dropped to third spot with a 9-2 record and 27 points. Not­ting­ham For­est sits fourth with 22 points, all with a match in hand on the lead­ers.

Af­ter ten ap­pear­ances on the sea­son, Wal­lace-Joseph leads all scor­ers with a to­tal of 427 goals, in­clu­sive of 339 goals from 358 at­tempts at 95 per cent shoot­ing ac­cu­ra­cy and 88 su­per shots scored from 121 at­tempts at 73 per cent shoot­ing per­cent­age.

In yes­ter­day’s ear­li­er match­es, Not­ting­ham For­est de­feat­ed Lon­don Mav­er­icks 57-49 at the Mo­to­sport Are­na and Lex­is­Nex­is Drag­ons torched NIC Leeds Rhi­nos 68-62.

Lat­est League stand­ings

Pl Teams P W L GF GA GD Bonus Pts

1. Lough­bor­ough Light­ning 11 10 1 807 676 131 1 31

2. Man­ches­ter Thun­der 11 9 2 706 587 119 1 28

3. Lon­don Pulse 11 9 2 689 589 100 0 27

4. Not­ting­ham For­est 11 6 5 695 687 8 4 22

5. Lex­is­Nex­is Drag­ons 11 4 7 640 684 -44 3 15

6. Lon­don Mav­er­icks 11 4 7 625 648 -23 1 13

7. NIC Leeds Rhi­nos 11 1 10 573 674 -101 1 5

8. Birm­ing­ham Pan­thers 11 1 10 550 740 -190 0 3