Licence to shoot

Baskets, that is.

As the Warrnambool 22-year-old explained this week, Canberra Capitals coach Carrie Graf expected her players to have an appetite to score.

"She's really big on if you're open, shoot," Hunt said.

"You never feel bad about taking an open shot.

"She wouldn't like it if you turned one down.

"Everyone in the team has a licence to shoot."

In her debut season with the WNBL defending champions, Hunt is making the most of her licence.

After 11 rounds, she is shooting the ball the best she has in her WNBL career, with a respectable field goal percentage of 49.2 per cent.

"We shoot for an hour on the day of the game," she said.

"Sometimes when you play a game in the evening, when you're not doing anything all day you can go into the game a bit lethargic, so it really helps."

The guard is averaging 6.4 points, two rebounds and 2.5 assists per game for the ladder leader.

"Some games I play well and then others I'm a little bit quiet," she said.

"I'm pretty happy but I would like to be a bit more consistent."

“I’m pretty happy but I would like to be a bit more consistent.”

Hunt sat out the game against the AIS a fortnight ago as a precautionary measure for a shoulder injury.

But apart from that, she has featured in the starting five every game. She said she would not be relaxing too much during her festive season break in Warrnambool.

“After Christmas, it’s going to be pretty tough,” she said.

“The majority of our games are against finals teams.”

The first match back is January 8 against her former side, Dandenong Rangers (fifth).

Canberra is hoping to bounce back after a shock six-point loss to Townsville Fire last Sunday.

“It was (an upset), with them being a bit lower on the ladder than us but we played well, they just played better,” Hunt said.

“We didn’t switch off, it was just all credit to them.”

It marked the Capitals’ second loss of the season but they are still two wins clear of the second-placed side, last season’s runner-up Bulleen Boomers.

Hunt preferred to keep tight-lipped about her team’s short-term goals but said that Canberra’s long-term goal was naturally to win another championship.

She explained she was personally working on “lots of little things”. “Like how to organise the team a bit more, bringing the ball down the court through the corridor rather than the sides and reacting to the defence,” she said.

The former WNBL Rookie of the Year felt she had settled in Canberra.

“I was pretty nervous going in, having to fill the shoes of (former guard) Nat Hurst, who is in France now,” she said. “But I think I’ve done OK and all the girls have been really welcoming.”

On top of training, Hunt is working one day a week at a sports store along with three to four days a week of administration/personal assistant work at a recruitment agency.