JO Leedham’s Olympic adventure may be over but she believes Great Britain’s plucky performances at London 2012 have helped put women’s basketball ‘on the map’.

The 24-year-old from Ellesmere Port was unable to lead the inexperienced international team to a single victory on their debut Games appearance.

But she is confident their courageous displays in the capital, which included an agonising defeat to world number eight side France on Friday, have done her sport a power of good in this country.

‘Proud’ captain Leedham, whose career started at Ellesmere Port Panthers, said: “One of the things we were looking to do going into London was to put basketball on the map and I think we have done that.

“Hopefully we can get more people playing and get people supporting us and as a sport get it out there.

“We have done ourselves proud I think. We have hung in there, we haven’t been embarrassed by teams and hopefully it is just onwards and upwards and get better as a nation and be in a better position come the next Olympics.”

Leedham took her superb pre-Olympic form into the London Games.

Before yesterday’s quarter-finals – which took place after the Pioneer went to press – the former Ellesmere Port Catholic High School student sat joint second in the individual scoring charts with an average of 16.2 points per game.

The small forward’s 29-point haul in the 80-77 overtime loss to France on Friday was also the highest individual points tally in the group stages.

Leedham was desperate to give supporters a win in Great Britain’s last match at the Olympics.

But it was Brazil, who had also lost their first four matches, who emerged victorious in Sunday’s final Group B clash.

Leedham, who scored 12 points in the 78-66 defeat, said: “We scouted them a lot going into the game and we thought we could have beat them but I think we just needed a bit more momentum then we had.

“It is a tough loss to take because we were looking at the Brazil game as one we could win and we haven’t managed that.”

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