BALLARAT Miners championship coach Brendan Joyce will lead the Australian Opals into his first basketball world titles as national women’s coach.
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The Opals open their FIBA world championship campaign on Saturday night against 2013 Americas champ Cuba in Instanbul, Turkey.
Joyce, who took up the Opals head coach role in May last year, will be hoping to meet high expectations. The Opals won Olympic bronze in London in 2012 and have medalled in three of the past four world championships.
The squad will feature Olympian Rachel Jarry, who attracted attention in a breakout season with Ballarat Lady Miners in the 2010 South East Australian Basketball League.
Jarry was set to play with Ballarat in 2011 but was sidelined with a knee injury, the same year she was taken at pick 18 in the American WNBA draft.
Injury cut short Jarry’s season with Melbourne Boomers in the Australian national league last summer.
Jarry returned in June for an Opals training camp and has shown strong form in the Opals’ world championship lead-up tournaments in Europe, including a four-nations hit-out in Paris this month.
The Opals will be without international stars Lauren Jackson and Liz Cambage. Jackson struggled to return from a knee injury and Cambage ruptured her Achilles tendon last week.