Harvey Norman Rush coach Peter Cunningham shoulders the blame.

He questioned whether he made too many changes, and not the best mix of experience and youth, to keep in this South East Australian Basketball League game.

To that point, halfway through the second quarter, Rush trailed by six points.

By half-time, the Tornadoes led by 20 points.

Rush’s first quarter was solid, carrying on the good form shown a night earlier in Hobart. Their second half was stellar, matching the Tornadoes 46 points apiece.

“That second quarter, we started to revert back to our old selves, from earlier in the season ... good sides take advantage of that,” Cunningham said.

“We were determined to not let that happen again in the second half. We set a standard on Friday night.

“We just need to learn how to win again.”

Shane Greaves continued her consistent, strong form in a lockdown role on key Tornadoes scorer Emilee Harmon.

While Harmon scored 14 points, the bulk were made in junk time. 

Greaves also made a scoring impact with 14 points, also reeling in seven rebounds.

Liv Thompson started on Tornadoes’ Mikaela Reuf  and kept her out of the game. Thompson was swapped to Kelly Wilson, who had 20 points to half-time, keeping her to a 30-point game.

But Reuf relished more freedom and worked her way to 20 points.

Cunningham said this showed the lack of depth to nullify multiple key scorers.

The Tornadoes put a lot of pressure on Rush co-captains Abbey Wehrung and Kristy Rinaldi, who both had trouble making their shots.

Rush still worked its way back within 12 points midway through the third quarter. The Tornadoes started to panic – technical fouls were called.

Cunningham, his assistant Darren Govan, and captains Wehrung and Rinaldi used the road trip to sit down and pull apart performance and ways to modify training preparations for their next game in a fortnight.