T&T "Ca­lyp­so Girls" will be ea­ger for a much-im­proved per­for­mance and a pos­si­ble up­set when they face Caribbean pow­er­house Ja­maica "Sun­shine Girls" in their penul­ti­mate Group G match of the Net­ball World Cup (NWC) pre­lim­i­nary stage two at the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion­al Cen­ter in Cape Town, South Africa, on Wednes­day.

Cur­rent­ly, the Sun­shine Girls, ranked fourth in the world be­hind top-ranked Aus­tralia, reign­ing cham­pi­on New Zealand and Eng­land, sit in the sec­ond spot in the six-team group with three wins from as many match­es for a max­i­mum of six points, the same as New Zealand who has a su­pe­ri­or goal-dif­fer­ence.

Host South Africa, ranked fifth in the world has a 2-1 record and four points, two ahead of the eighth-ranked Ugan­da (1-2) fol­lowed by win­less Wales, ninth in the world, and the 11th-ranked T&T, both at 0-3.

Dur­ing the first stage of the tour­na­ment, the "Ca­lyp­so Girls" led by the con­sis­tent scor­ing of Afeisha Noel de­feat­ed Sin­ga­pore 49-36 while they suf­fered heavy de­feats at the hands of New Zealand 76-27 and Ugan­da 74-34.

With T&T be­ing drawn in the same stage two pool as New Zealand and Ugan­da, and Sin­ga­pore in an­oth­er pool, it meant that they took no points as the Asians end­ed bot­tom of the first stage pool and were placed in the pool with the oth­er cel­lar-placed teams to con­test po­si­tions 13th to 16th.

The Ja­maicans, on the oth­er hand, crushed Sri Lan­ka (105-25), Wales (75-40), and South Africa (67-49) be­hind the scor­ing of the pro­lif­ic Aus­tralian-based duo of vet­er­ans Jhaniele Fowler and Romel­da Aiken-George, and lo­cal­ly-based Shan­ice Beck­ford and be­gan stage two with an­oth­er com­mand­ing win, 61-49 against Ugan­da with Fowler, the sec­ond lead­ing scor­er in the com­pe­ti­tion con­vert­ing 28 of 28 at­tempts, while Aiken-George was 15 of 15 and Beck­ford, ten from as many at­tempts.

Go­ing in­to to­day’s match, T&T coach Joel ‘Twig­gy Young-Strong and co-cap­tains Shaquan­da Greene-Noel and Daystar Swift will be hop­ing that their play­ers will be able to pro­vide Noel and four-time World Cup play­er Joelisa Coop­er with more of the ball, as the pair have al­so proven to be very ef­fi­cient through­out the tour­na­ment so far.

How­ev­er, the T&T girls, led by Greene-Noel and the ex­pe­ri­enced Swift will al­so be test­ed se­vere­ly on the de­fen­sive end by the Ja­maica trio and will need to step up great­ly if the "Ca­lyp­so Girls", for­mer cham­pi­ons in 1979 along with New Zealand and Aus­tralia on home soil, are to have a chance at an un­like­ly win.

In their last meet­ing at the Amer­i­c­as NWC Qual­i­fiers last Oc­to­ber in Kingston, host Ja­maica dom­i­nat­ed T&T 69-47 in their tour­na­ment de­cider.

In the oth­er Pool G match­es to­day, Wales faces Ugan­da and South Africa plays New Zealand.

Yes­ter­day in Pool F, Aus­tralia im­proved to 4-0 and a max­i­mum of eight points and ham­mer­ing Malawi 70-46 to seal the first semi­fi­nal spot. They were joined by the Eng­land "Ros­es" who trashed Fi­ji 89-28 for a fourth win as well, to move four points clear of Malawi with one pool match left to play against the Aussies while Ton­ga de­feat­ed Scot­land 55-47.

In the four-team round-robin group for po­si­tions 13th to 16th, Bar­ba­dos im­proved to 2-0 af­ter edg­ing Sin­ga­pore 55-50 while Zim­bab­we de­feat­ed Sri Lan­ka 71-36 in a clash of pre­vi­ous­ly win­less teams.

The teams fin­ish­ing first and sec­ond in Groups 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 win­ners of each se­mi-fi­nal com­pet­ed for gold in the fi­nal, with the losers play­ing for bronze.

The teams fin­ish­ing third and fourth in Groups F and G will com­pete for fi­nal po­si­tions fifth to eighth with third in one group play­ing fourth in the oth­er, with the win­ners play­ing off for fifth place and the losers for sev­enth.

The teams that fin­ished fifth in Groups F and G will con­test for po­si­tions ninth and tenth and the teams that fin­ish last in Groups F and G, will play for 11th and 12th places, while the teams that fin­ished first and sec­ond in Group E play for 13th and 14th place and the teams that fin­ish third and fourth in Group E com­pete in the 15th and 16th place play­offs.

To­day’s (Wednes­day, Au­gust 2) match­es:

Pool G:

Zim­bab­we vs Sin­ga­pore, 8 am

Wales vs Ugan­da, 11 am

Ja­maica vs T&T, 4 pm

South Africa vs New Zealand, 6 pm

Sri Lan­ka vs Bar­ba­dos, 7 pm

Stage Two cur­rent stand­ings:

Pool F:

Teams*P*W*D*L*F*A*Pts

Aus­tralia*4*4*0*0*333*153*8

Eng­land*4*4*0*0*285*150*8

Malawi*4*2*0*2*202*229*4

Ton­ga*4*2*0*2*195*255*4

Scot­land*4*0*0*4*170*249*0

Fi­ji*4*0*0*4*159*308*0

Pool G:

New Zealand*3*3*0*0*213*105*6

Ja­maica*3*3*0*0*203*136*6

South Africa*3*2*0*1*179*145*4

Ugan­da*3*1*0*2*167*149*2

Wales*3*0*0*3*124*219*0

T&T*3*0*0*3*89*219*0

Re­main­ing pool match­es:

To­mor­row (Thurs­day, Au­gust 3):

Pool G:

Wales vs T&T, 9 am

Ja­maica vs New Zealand, 11 am

South Africa vs Ugan­da, 4 pm

Pool F:

Aus­tralia vs Eng­land, 9 am

Fi­ji vs Scot­land, 11 am

Ton­ga vs Malawi, 4 pm