Ellis' historic night powers Fire past Lightning

Townsville's Abbey Ellis has produced one of the all-time great WNBL individual performances with a mammoth 47-point effort in the Fire's 86-68 away win over Adelaide.

The defending champions trailed 35-21 in the second quarter but outscored Adelaide 27-10 in the last term.

They improved to 1-1 while Adelaide dropped to 0-2.

Ellis kept her team afloat in the first half, scoring 25 of their first 33 points and their first 16 of the second quarter.

Her individual score was the equal fifth-highest in WNBL history and the largest in 21 years.

She joined League legends, Lauren Jackson, Penny Taylor and Belinda Snell among the only players to record 47 points and six steals in a game.

"It's a pretty cool feeling," Ellis said.

She hit 16 of 24 from the field, nailing seven of 13 from three-point range.

"Credit to our team, we used the ball really well and found the hot hand," Ellis said.

Townsville coach Shannon Seebohm said Ellis was one of the bravest players he had coached.

"Abbey had probably one of the best games that I know I've ever seen In the WNBL, making huge shots, making big plays," Seebohm said.

"I said to her probably the thing I was most proud of her wasn't all the scoring, (it was) that she was fighting as hard as she could and defending her butt off."

Adelaide led by seven at quarter-time and Townsville scored the last seven points of the second quarter to get within three at the half.

As the game progressed, Townsville's defence improved and Ellis got more scoring support from Courtney Woods (14) and German centre Marie Gulich (13). 

Alicia Froling grabbed 11 rebounds and Alexandra Fowler 10 to help Townsville collect 11 more boards.

Adelaide were shooting at 62 per cent from the field at halftime, but that dropped to 45 per cent by the end, as they scored just 25 points after halftime.

"We had a tough second half," Lightning coach Aja Parham-Ammar said.

Tayla Brazel led Adelaide's offence with a personal WNBL career-high of 19, at 72 per cent from the field.

Shay Ciezki tallied 13 points, Zitina Aokuso 12 and Opals star Steph Talbot had 11 and nine assists in her first game back from WNBA duties.