T&T se­nior net­ballers slumped to their sec­ond huge loss at the Net­ball World Cup in Cape Town South Africa on Sun­day, falling to Ugan­da, 74-34.

Play­ing at the Cape In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, the "Ca­lyp­so Girls", led by co-cap­tains and de­fend­ers Shaquan­da Greene-Noel and Daystar Swift, were out­played by the dom­i­nat­ing Ugan­dans to place third in Pool D match and moved on to pre­lim­i­nar­ies - sec­ond stage.

Their pre­vi­ous World Cup en­counter was in 2019 in Liv­er­pool, with the She Cranes scor­ing a nar­row 57-54 vic­to­ry then. They cur­rent­ly oc­cu­py the 8th po­si­tion on the world rank­ings com­pared to the Ca­lyp­so Girls’ 11th.

"No ex­cus­es! Not good enough from every per­son that went on the court tonight. I think that we fell away from what we need­ed to do, we had a plan and we are all guilty of not fol­low­ing it," said Greene-Noel af­ter the match.

Stay­ing pos­i­tive, she added: "And you learn more from a loss than a win so it's back to the draw­ing board to come back stronger."

De­spite a shaky start and trail­ing by a hand­ful of goals in the open­ing min­utes, Ugan­da’s strate­gic moves soon start­ed chal­leng­ing T&T. They re­sort­ed to their trade­mark phys­i­cal­i­ty and posed prob­lems at both ends of the court for their op­po­nents.

Goal­keep­er Muhameed Hani­isha proved es­pe­cial­ly trou­ble­some for the T&T shoot­ers of Joelisa Coop­er (3/3) and Afeisha Noel (29/31). She was re­spon­si­ble for a num­ber of in­ter­cepts and was in­stru­men­tal in her team lead­ing by three points af­ter the first 15 min­utes.

The sec­ond quar­ter saw Ugan­da strength­en­ing their grip on the match, leav­ing their op­po­nents strug­gling to find a way to pen­e­trate their sol­id de­fence. This car­ried through to the Ugan­dan goal shoot­ers Mary Chol­hok and Irene Eyaru who con­sis­tent­ly con­vert­ed at­tempts in­to points on the board.

Com­ing back from the half­time break 33-18 in the lead, Ugan­da pound­ed on the pres­sure even more. The Ca­lyp­so Girls tried to stage a come­back through some in­di­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions, in­clud­ing from Coop­er and Ale­na Brooks who be­tween them, man­aged nine turnovers in gen­er­al play.

Ugan­da, how­ev­er, stood firm­ly in their way, play­ing as a co­he­sive unit and not al­low­ing their op­po­si­tion much breath­ing space.

Their lead was sub­stan­tial and the play­ers kept their fo­cus through­out the next 15 min­utes, reach­ing the 50-point mark be­fore the end of the third quar­ter.

In the fi­nal 15 min­utes, the She Cranes so­lid­i­fied their dom­i­na­tion. Their pass­ing was pre­cise and scor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties were cre­at­ed with­out putting in too much ef­fort. Cen­tre Mar­gret Baa­gala put in an­oth­er spec­tac­u­lar per­for­mance, both on at­tack and de­fence.

"A lit­tle bit dis­ap­point­ed. We let our­selves down in this game," said co-cap­tain Swift. "It should have been a more even­ly matched game. We made a lit­tle too many er­rors, too many un­forced er­rors and we didn't cap­i­talise on the things we work so hard to get.

"Mov­ing for­ward we need to lim­it the er­rors that we made to make an im­pact mov­ing for­ward."

Fol­low­ing the pre­lim­i­nar­ies -stage one for­mat the top three teams in Pool A and B will move through to play in Pool F in stage two of the pre­lim­i­nar­ies, while the top three sides in Pool C and D will move in­to Pool G. The bot­tom team from each pool in the first pre­lim­i­nary stage will go in­to Pool E.

T&T, by virtue of fin­ish­ing third in Pool D, moves on to Pool G in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies - sec­ond stage along with New Zealand, Ja­maica, Ugan­da, South Africa and Wales. The oth­er group in­clude Aus­tralia, Eng­land, Malawi, Ton­ga and Scot­land. The re­sults from the first phase car­ry over to the next stage which means T&T will on­ly play the un­beat­en Ja­maican "Sun­shine Girls", South Africa and Wales.

Teams fin­ish­ing first and sec­ond in Pools F and G will go through to the semi­fi­nals, with the top-placed team in each group fac­ing the sec­ond-placed team in the oth­er group. The oth­er re­main­ing teams will go on to com­pete for the fi­nal plac­ings, from fifth to 16th.

T&T will open the sec­ond stage against South Africa to­day at 1 pm (T&T time)

Fi­nal pool stand­ings

Pre­lim­i­nary group stage

Pool A

Team W D L GF GA Pts

Aus­tralia 3 0 0 272 100 6

Ton­ga 2 0 1 149 182 4

Fi­ji 1 0 2 135 205 2

Zim­bab­we 0 0 3 124 193 0

Pool B

Team W D L GF GA Pts

Eng­land 3 0 0 214 105 6

Malawi 2 0 1 178 159 4

Scot­land 1 0 2 139 161 2

Bar­ba­dos 0 0 3 121 227 0

Pool C

Team W D L GF GA Pts

Ja­maica 3 0 0 247 114 6

South Africa 2 0 1 197 149 4

Wales 1 0 2 158 192 2

Sri Lan­ka 0 0 3 113 260 0

Pool D

Team W D L GF GA Pts

New Zealand 3 0 0 210 90 6

Ugan­da 2 0 1 197 125 4

Trinidad and To­ba­go 1 0 1 110 186 2

Sin­ga­pore 0 0 3 92 208 0

Yes­ter­day's re­sults

T&T 34 (Afeisha Noel 29/31, Joelisa Coop­er 3/3, Tiana Dil­lon 2/6) vs Ugan­da 74 (Chol­hok 35/36, Nas­san­ga 17/19, Na­mu­lum­ba 4/5, Eyaru 18/19). Quar­ter scores: 1st 14–11, 2nd 33–18, 3rd 54–27)

Malawi 84 vs Bar­ba­dos 48

Ja­maica 67 vs South Africa 49

Aus­tralia 101 vs Fi­ji 32

Wales 68 vs Sri Lan­ka 56

New Zealand 80 vs Sin­ga­pore 19

Eng­land 62 vs Scot­land 37

Ton­ga 55 vs Zim­bab­we 46

To­day's match­es

Zim­bab­we vs Bar­ba­dos; Aus­tralia vs Scot­land, 2 am

Wales vs New Zealand; Fi­ji vs Malawi, 4 am

Sri Lan­ka vs Sin­ga­pore; Ja­maica vs Ugan­da, 9 am

South Africa vs T&T; Ton­ga vs Eng­land, 1 pm