Back on Jan.27, the Perth Lynx had just dismantled the Southside Melbourne Flyers, 111-79. The Lynx were back to their old ways, shooting 15-for-37 from deep while three players hit 20 points with Steph Gorman in tow at 17.
Head coach Ryan Petrik took to the stand in his postgame press conference to declare: “We’ve been preparing for Bendigo and Townsville since round one.”
It was an extremely bold call considering Perth had two games remaining in their season, one of which against the Bendigo Spirit. He doubled down:
“Every defensive scheme and every offensive scheme we’ve put in; ‘do we think this will work against Bendigo and Townsville?’ It might destroy [us against] whoever number five, six, seven is; whatever. If we think that Townsville or Bendigo will kill it, then don’t bother. Find things that will work against those two teams.”
This set the stage for the postseason with three weeks of the regular season still to play. The Townsville Fire would host Southside in the 1-4 semi-final, while the Lynx would host the Spirit in the 2-3 matchup.
Perth handled a battered Bendigo roster in two games, but they were far from convincing. With just one returning starter from last years championship, Bendigo went deep into their rotation to find great minutes from players playing above their pay grade. They showed grit and determination that had them punching above their weight class, losing Game 1 by 10 points and Game 2 by 6. This booked Perth’s ticket to the WNBL Grand Final series.
Townsville charted a course that looked as though it would be smooth sailing, starting the first game of the series on a 17-0 run.
They won Game 1 easily, 88-60. In hindsight and at the time, it was clear this game was over in the first five minutes. This might have been the first symbol of the eventual WNBL champions as Perth never landed a blow quite as significant in their semi-final series. Townsville came out prepared and focused; the same could not be said about Perth against Bendigo.
Game 2 of Townsville’s matchup against Southside was a completely different story. The Flyers pulled out an electric performance. They had been up and down all season and the postseason was no different. They won 109-89 shooting 66% on two’s and 45.5% on three’s as a unit. Co-captains Maddy Rocci and Cayla George led the charge and everyone followed suit. Rocci put up 24 points on 15 field goal attempts, 11 assists and two steals. George had 32 points on 17 field goal attempts with 11 rebounds, six assists, two steals and one of the greatest postgame interviews of all time.
It was pure poetry and perhaps Petrik’s comments after Perth’s regular season win against the Flyers were duly noted. It served as a great exclamation point on a somewhat disappointing Southside season.
Game 3 was different story once again. The Flyers were firing early but the Fire were able to get their flight to the Grand Final series back on its path before half time. Townsville decided that the second half was going to be an arm wrestle and made it look as if Southside had no say in the matter, which could have been the second symbol of their eventual championship. The Fire won Game 3 84-74 and would host Perth for the Grand Final series.
Townsville won this season series 2-1 with no home team having notched a win. The first two bouts were seemingly no contests, with the final meeting on January 20 having the intensity of a playoff game. Townsville won 82-76 after both teams traded the advantage on the scoreboard throughout the second half. After the game the Lynx players huddled around the centre circle. Captain Anneli Maley shared what the message was after the game with The IX Basketball:
“We do that after every game win or loss. [The message] was more of a stay together, like we always do. Talked about a couple of the key points that we wanted to take out and most of us, if not all of us, go home and rewatch the games probably instantly. I know that’s what I’ll be doing. So just a couple things that we want to look at. Encouraging people to go back and watch the game, sticking together, and then just focus on your recovery, look into the game, and then we move on.”
It was the Lynx second game against the top team on the ladder in five days, with the first being against Bendigo to tip off HoopsFest, a game in which Perth won. Maley then spoke on these two tests in the lead up to the postseason:
“This is all preparation for finals, there’s really no excuse. If we want to win we have to be able to put these things together. You learn more from your losses [than] you do your wins so it’s going to give us a lot to look at. I can see a lot of positive takes out of this game. It’s on us to then go back to the drawing board and fix a couple of things. But I think that the main point is really when we do decide to get angry and play, it’s a night and day difference. So, just finding a way as a leadership group to cultivate that from the very beginning. That’s something that we can definitely do.”
Another theme that was true in that game was reflective of the Townsville and Perth matchup all season and is usually consistent through the history of basketball; the team that won the rebound count won the game. The closest rebound margin in the regular season was seven, with that final regular season game being in favour of Townsville by 18. Fire head coach Shannon Seebohm spoke about this with The IX Basketball:
“Possession is everything in basketball. We’ve been terrible rebounding the ball, and that was one of the things we spoke about before this game, how important that was going to be. Anneli Maley still had 15 boards but we at least held her to three offensive rebounds. Against a team like Perth, if you give them more possessions or you give them second chances or you turn the ball over live, they’re going to absolutely destroy you and they’ll score 100 points. That’s pretty much what happened last time we played them.”
A retrospective third symbol of the eventual champions, Seebohm knew how important an advantage in possessions was going to be against Perth. To embolden his point, in Perth’s regular season win, they were able to snag 12 offensive rebounds from the duo of Maley and Han Xu. Keeping those two off the offensive glass was where the Fire would have to start and end. With their front court stocks decimated, this would be the biggest challenge.
With centre and 2025 WNBL DPOY Lauren Cox sustaining a season ending injury, Alicia Froling was the sole big in the rotation. It was incumbent on wings Alex Fowler and Chantal Horvat to fill in at the five when Froling went to the bench. Securing rebounds was a collective team effort as their wings and bigs primary task was boxing out Maley and Xu.
Froling played a total of 77 minutes and 47 seconds out of 85 minutes in this series, which went to overtime in Game 2. At 6’3, she gives up a cool eight inches to Xu yet was able to neutralise her on the glass with both players amassing 15 rebounds during the Grand Final series. Townsville won the rebound count in Game 1 45-37 yet lost it in Game 2 46-47.
Of the latter, this was the only time the team that won the rebound battle lost the game, albeit a difference of one. Maley accounted for 34 of the Lynx 84 rebounds, or 40%, while the Fire didn’t have one player tally double digit rebounds in either game. Whether that was the intention or not, it was illustrative of each teams approach to the glass.
After a mildly comfortable Game 1 win for Townsville, Petrik had to make some adjustments as the series made its way to Perth. The most glaring difference was in his rotations. When asked if this was a change in gameplan between the games or something he was adjusting to on the fly, he told The IX Basketball:
“A bit of both. We were trying to find some defensive stops and again what was it, 108-105. Our thought process was Tegan [Graham] and Steph Gorman are our two best perimeter defenders, or certainly two of our best three. We tried to get them some more minutes to try and slow down [Miela] Sowah and [Courtney] Woods and that helped a little bit but we weren’t able to find enough offence.”
He also admitted, “and obviously tired legs from the first game. So that was kind of the theory in the juggling acts.”
Gorman and Graham definitely made an impact given a bigger role in the second game. They disrupted Townsville’s creation from the perimeter. Woods posted an exemplary 1.47 points per possession in Game 2, a number that was dragged down considerably by Gorman, even if that was still 1.25. Included in this was a made wide open three from Woods after Froling crunched Gorman on a screen and Xu was nowhere to be seen on the drop, something the Fire exploited all series.
Townsville’s preparedness to attack the drop cannot be overstated. They were able to get their perimeter players downhill and in their comfort zones with the use of ball screens and dribble hand offs. Knowing that Xu, or Yemiyah Morris for that matter, was going to be sagging off Froling and Horvat, Townsville would waste no time when either player was involved in any action. With playmakers like Woods, Sowah, Abbey Ellis and Lucy Olsen, the Fire were afforded far too much space going towards the rim.
Ellis took these opportunities in Game 1 with 11 points, seven rebounds, six assists and zero turnovers. She continued to be the engine of this teams offence and provide stingy defence at the point of attack. Her primary task for the series was Ally Wilson, someone the 5’6 Ellis is four inches shorter than.
Wilson is the most dynamic player on Perth’s roster, especially offensively. All five of the Lynx starters averaged between 14 and 16 points and Wilson led the offence with five assists. Across the two games in the Grand Final series, Wilson scored 25 points on 28 total field goal attempts and had seven turnovers. She was able to facilitate quite successfully with 12 assists in the series, yet Ellis played the largest hand in speeding her up and establishing the pace of the game out of the gates.
Her offensive numbers took a step back in Game 2 but enter Lucy Olsen. The player coach Seebohm labelled as Townsville’s “x-factor,” Olsen chose a great game to have a great game. She scored an efficient 15 points with five assists and one turnover. The clarity and production she was able to provide was a major difference in Townsville securing the championship in Game 2.
Sowah and Froling were imperative in their ability to produce as well. It was known that opportunities would lend themselves to both players, both from offensive execution and Perth keying in on Woods, but efficiency on volume was a question that was to be answered.
In her return to the WNBL these past six seasons, Froling hasn’t averaged more than 13 points per game. In this series, she beat that mark in both games, with 25 points on 15 shots in Game 2. For Sowah, there was more assurance that she would be able to deliver, but the mental side of playing against the team she had spent the last two seasons with was surely an added layer of pressure. She looked at ease on this play, excusing the friendly fire to Olsen.
That just leaves one player: Courtney Woods. The woman who came third in MVP voting behind Maley in second and Isobel Borlase of Bendigo who won. Woods is a consumate professional and the ultimate leader. On Sowah’s huge three, it was team first in noticing the little things with The IX Basketball:
“I feel like it’s Miela hitting that massive shot to send us into overtime, but it’s Chantel Horvat who got the offensive rebound. It’s just plays like that where Miela hits the shot, but it’s all of us that are in position to kind of make that happen.”
She elaborted, mentioning the atmosphere in Perth for Game 2:
“There’s just moments I feel like we even looked at each other and obviously Perth was loud, they sold out their arena. So it’s stressful and they went on a lot of runs, but it’s even moments when we get in our huddles and we’re all looking at each other and just telling us we’re okay. I feel like that is how we’ve continued to win close games, is just the connection between all of us as players has just provided enough encouragement, enough support that we’re able to kind of like keep fighting. There was a lot of times in that game where I feel like we could have just like rolled over and Perth could have gone up 15.
“But we continued to make tough shots when we really needed a bucket and it was all different people. Alicia had so many tough finishes on Han who’s probably one of the best defenders in the world. And I feel like that’s just been our season. I feel like Shannon’s just asked us to be brave and fearless. And I think we’ve kind of given each other enough encouragement to make that happen.”
Lynx guard Amy Atwell made mention of the atmosphere with The IX Basketball:
“The league is an unreal spot. The soldout crowd here is and a record crowd for us is unreal. Obviously we didn’t get the result we wanted but where women’s basketball is heading and where this league is heading is exciting for years to come.”
It’s hard to quantify what Courtney Woods brings to a basketball team even with two amazing box scores in the Grand Final series. She poured in a combined 50 points, 14 rebounds, nine assists and four steals. She gave out nine fouls and copped 11. Not included in that is the play that led to the following incident.
She had her head glued and back out she went to drop 28 points in the decider while fouling out before overtime. She spoke about watching OT from the sidelines in her postgame press conference:
“Lucy came in, Miela obviously hit that massive shot and then we went to overtime without two of our starters. The way that we just kept going. Alicia made some huge plays. Miela obviously hit two game winners pretty much. That, for me, kind of represents our entire season. Just when we have needed people to step up, they have.”
Represent was an indicative word that Woods chose to use. When Seebohm was relayed Woods numbers from the Grand Final series, prompted on her head being glued back together and asked how it represented her whole season he was clearly emotional when he tried to answer with The IX Basketball: “oh, mate…” his mind drifted elsewhere while his eyes welled up. He then gathered himself:
“She’s just tough. Anything I’ve ever asked her to do on the basketball court, she’s tried her best to do. Whether that’s score, defend, rebound. We lost Lauren Cox, I went to her and said, ‘I need you to average seven rebounds a game.’ She goes and does it. Last year I say to her, ‘hey, mate, we’re not going to win unless you start passing the ball to people when they’re open.’ She goes and leads the league in assists. Talked to her recently about, ‘hey, you need to start shooting the three when you’re open because everyone’s guarding you for a drive.’ She comes today and nails them.
“I just can’t say enough good things about her. She has led our team from the front since day one with no experience in this role. We have the youngest team and I think you could see our practices. I can honestly sit back at practice half the time now and she coaches the team as well. So like, you know, she literally does everything for us and I’m just so grateful to have a player and person like Courtney on our team.”
It was a beautiful and eloquent full stop on both Townsville and the WNBL’s season, before champagne sprayed into the press conference room with Olsen close behind. As hard as it is to encapsulate Woods impact, Seebohm paralleled his star player and tried his best to do so.
The first WNBL season under new ownership was punctuated with one of the greatest finals games the league had ever seen. It can be argued that the league was able to attract its strongest import class from top to bottom of all time. There was still a gulf between Townsville, Perth, Bendigo and the rest, but even one of the rest was able to nab a postseason victory against Townsville.
The Townsville championship somewhat pays homage to the recent history that the league has been built upon. It was the Fire’s fifth championship, all of which have been won in the past 11 years. As the WNBL continues to forge forth with Townsville still serving as the league’s face of success is absolute cinema.
If this season was a sign of things to come then who knows what heights the league could reach in 2027.
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