Hoops

WNBL Grand Finals - Perth vs Townsville

That Guy - Where is your guru coach Lucas heading off to now? It was common knowledge that he wasn't going to be back in the Ville after this season!

Apologies, not silver medalists in 2014. Finished 5th, with a 6-1 overall record, losing only to the Czechs.

Overzealous support got out of hand for second.

And Shannon is so green that signalling him for his 'development of players' just reeks bias.

Do tell, which players has Shannon developed in his two years of coaching?

The train wreck that won the silver medal losing only to the US?

Can anyone remember the train wreck of a job that Lucas done with the Oz U-17 Girls team at the World Championships? That probably shows that Lucas is not a great developer of young talent & is better equipped to coach more senior players. Basketball Australia quickly replaced him with Shannon Seebohm who is more known for his development of players.

"Did anyone else see the childish tantrum tweets that the head of BA has been sending out?
...[Tweets deleted for space]...
This is the guy in charge of the league. Under his watch things have gone backwards fast it seems. And this is his response? This is his leadership? So embarrassing and highly unprofessional and certainly not constructive. Is he spitefully trying turn burn all bridges so that his successor will have no hope of fixing all his botched efforts? Sure seems like it."

Now why didn't Moore take his own advice (his advice to Liz, that is) and reach out privately to try and sort the matter instead of causing a fuss on social media.

Why so salty? Because Lucas coaches a team that pays for big talent? Seems he's replaced Wright for a lot of people as their favourite to dislike... Speaking of, look at all the talent Dandy bought last season and still fell quite short (again). Give Lucas his due, a club purchasing an advantage does not always equal automatic championship.

Fire never had a stacked roster this season, they just had the most important thing in the WNBL...Batgirl + size, big teams can dominate in the WNBL, Suzi and Cayla were always going to win the championship this season, I told everyone at seasons start when the Fire odds were healthy $3+ to bet "hundreds" on them....I did! Thanks Fire!

I reckon Lucas is a descent senior coach.
Keep him away from the juniors though...

Lucas with 5/5 final appearances. 4 straight grand finals. 2 straight championships.

But yeah, lets talk him down for not being able to assemble a roster, get girls to play for him and win when it matters.

Typical basement dwelling, bitter nobody throwing shade over a great coaching crew.

The usual Lucas critic is around masquerading as some unknown that pretends to not know the name of the Fire assistant.

His saltiness is easily identifiable, as we Count the number Of Hoops; his identity becomes transparent as day.

I know that disliking Chris Lucas is a popular pastime here on hoops. I'm not aware of the history behind that so I'm not taking sides on that one.
There's no question that the Fire were a stacked roster, but he took them to a sweep of the GF series which is all you can ask really.
Parallels with the Wildcats situation. Plenty of people don't rate Gleeson, but he won the title. He had a lot of things in his favour to do that, so it's hard to judge how much is coaching and how much is talent & other factors, but at the end of the day how critical can you really be of the champs.

The Fire made some nice adjustments to the way they defended the Lynx after we blew them away in their own building in the semi final. Those adjustments worked well, and Perth failed to counter them effectively. Series over. So credit where it's due to the Fire coaching staff for that.

Is the Fire sustainable? Well they get the best support in the WNBL and by a good margin. Fans & sponsors queuing up to get behind the team, which has done a great job of engaging the community. I read somewhere recently that this year has been their best yet, financially speaking. If they're paying players well and still turning a profit then that's a great thing for the WNBL, so to me it's worthy of credit not criticism.

Luuuc - what's the game plan? Perhaps have the biggest WNBL player budget in the history of the game? At some stage the $$$ will run out to buy championships & where will the coaching duo of Lucas & Brassard be? My tip Lucas will be long gone & on to his next team where he'll convince them to pay $$$ for players which will be beyond the financial means!

Well whatever combination of Lucas & Brassard it was that created the Fire's game plan, it was very effective and I give them credit for putting it in place so well.


As a Lynx fan, the pain of losing the GF was quickly replaced by good feelings about the season overall, and also the generous $3.25 from the start of the season arriving in my sportsbet account. The Fire were a level above in both talent and experience when the season tipped off, so there's no shame in losing to them. And the Fire winning at home in front of the WNBL's best fan base is a nice ending too.

Boti's tears also had a sweet taste to them.

"In many ways, it was probably good for the league Townsville again claimed the silverware because the goalposts most definitely have shifted for the competition"
"one club can go fully pro and eight cannot"
"the playing field has changed. Of that, there can be no doubt"
"There may have been a wry smile or two in Townsville last night too ... there was a lot of advice and very little sympathy or empathy coming out of Perth for where the Crocodiles had gone wrong ... Very sure the country folk won't be calling Perth with any WNBL advice in return"


Interesting that in a post celebrating the Fire's impressive achievement of 4 straight GF appearances and back-to-back titles, he spends a lot of it throwing barbs at the Perth Lynx.
While some think that a higher level of professionalism is a good thing to aim for...
"I'd love to see the whole league turn professional... Imagine how good we could be"
- Suzy Batkovic

... others would apparently prefer to keep the status quo of the women being treated as part-time, second-class athletes. Disappointing.

As an NBL fan I'm grateful for Larry Kestelman having enough faith in his vision to put some real money and resources into it, and giving it a real chance to succeed.
As a WNBL fan I'm equally grateful to Jack Bendat for doing the same with the Perth Lynx. It can't have been cheap but I'll bet the players appreciate being treated as real athletes.

Can't believe that Lucas is a back to back championship coach, I wouldn't rate him in the Top 3 coaches in the league from a Basketball IQ perspective. It's interesting to watch the Fire play as you would think that Broussard is the Head Coach & Lucas is the Asst Coach. Which is not too surprising as Broussard is on the Fire Board & an Asst Coach at the same time, would any other club have that specific set up?

Congrats to Townsville on the win. Too deep & composed.
That's twice in a row the Lynx have been in front in the 4th and fallen apart. Combined 4th quarter score for the 2 games was 51-16. That's huge in an otherwise close series.

A little surprised Suzy didn't get finals MVP, but Cocks certainly a worthy winner too.

Back to the drawing board for Lynx. When the going gets tough we can't just stuff around for half the shot clock and then expect Sami to create offence on her own. Our captain went AWOL when it mattered most, unfortunately, after a very solid regular season. A lot of credit to Townsville's D for shutting us down.

Still damn proud of the Lynx of course. A bloody good "first" season.

Half time Burton 1 rebound, Lavey 0 assists & shooting 1/8.
You watching Brendan?
Suzy killing it.

You sure? That would explain the difference but I'm pretty sure I got them from the same place

Luuuc the first odds you posted were to take out the WNBL championship.

The second odds are for tonights game only!

15 min from tip-off and a few punters must have noticed those long Lynx odds. Perth in to $3.50, Townsville $1.25

YouTube Live Stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl2D3OphTK4

Live Stats:
http://www.fibalivestats.com/u/wnbl/270587/

4 hours from game 2 tip-off, and the bookies think it's a foregone conclusion.
Fire $1.15
Lynx $5.25

I'm not so sure, but to stay alive Andy Stewart will need to have devised a way to exploit mismatches against Townsville's D and keep the scoreboard ticking over, which we failed at in game 1.

I highly doubt it.
They put a lot of manpower & effort into game nights, they of course paid all players a salary (at least NBL minimum), and they never got the Lynx a major sponsor.

Not that they would have expected to make money this season. It has been decades since Perth even remotely cared about its WNBL team, and those attitudes don't change in a single season. Especially when it's the first season of the product no longer being viewable on tv. Unfortunate timing, because the Lynx are a very watchable team.

I also think that being associated with the Wildcats turned off some of the grass roots fans once the Wildcats pricing kicked in. eg. For the same amount I paid last season for courtside seats to the Waves, I was able to sit in the silver area this season, so I think they got their pricing wrong. I would have liked to sit in gold but I thought the price was OTT. People aren't going to pay a huge premium to be at the front of Bendat Basketball Centre. The $120 for a season of parking wasn't exactly a killer but it was another little sting for something that had always previously been free.

They'd be looking at this as a long term project though. And it's not going to be an easy one. Women's sport is a tough sell. I certainly applaud them for giving it a go though.

1,696 according to Lynx twitter.

(Which sounds a little on the generous side to me, tbh. Seemed like more than 300 empty seats)

"Mijovic shot terribly 1-12 overall, 0-7 from 3."

Was definitely a reality check game for her.
They guarded her with undersized opponents all game presumably to reduce her open looks on the perimeter, and it definitely did. As a result she forced up a lot of shots she shouldn't have taken. She's a great shooter when open, but not when rushed or outside her normal range.
What she should have done was relentlessly take her opponent down into the low block but it hardly ever happened. It's a part of her game she has managed to show at stages this season, so I was disappointed to see her stay on the perimeter so much last night.
Will be interesting to see what adjustments are made for Friday.

I haven't written off Perth's chances as I know we're a far better team than we showed last night, but the odds are obviously slim now.

Mijovic shot terribly 1-12 overall, 0-7 from 3.

Burton was a beast with 3 points and a rebound! Watch out USA!

Yep credit where it's due to the Fire. They played a solid game and got it done with excellent defence.

Good call by them to switch things around and use their SFs to guard Mijovic, who has killed them from outside in the last 2 games. For some reason we seemed to show no interest in posting Carley up to exploit that mismatch in the paint, but it didn't stop her throwing up a heap of rushed shots. When she takes what is there she is a deadly shooter. When she's determined to jack up a shot regardless of where she is or how well she's being defended, it doesn't end well.

In the other mismatch created by the swap, Cayla made things tough enough for Betnijah to not score efficiently.
Win to Townsville there.

Meanwhile Batkovic absolutely had her way with Burton.

Whitcomb threatened to get going a couple of times but was well enough contained, and for some reason Lavey kept insisting on driving it at Townsville's bigs despite coming up empty every time.

A very un-Lynx-like performance, which is actually what gives me a little bit of hope that we can still get game 2. Still against the odds, but surely our offence can't be that bad again.

Really nice games by Gallagher & Cocks to give Suzy some support.

cambage, batkovic, George, tolo, Jackson, griffin, hodges, penaluna, bishop, Tomlinson, scherf all ahead of burton imo.
I'd even put some of the college kids like smith and froling ahead of her at pf.

Bad luck Lynx. In there for 3/4 of the game. Hopefully they can pick up a win in Townsville and the series go to 3. Going to be a tough assignment though.

On the positive side, how good is Batkovic looking in prep for the Olympics. Granted Perth don't have the bigger bodies to deny her post moves but wow, can't say many negatives about her game.

Sami Witcombe has some great range and is a huge plus looking forward for the Lynx. Laney looked like she was the only one interested in rebounding tonight. Need the others to step up. Agree that Burton should be coming off the bench, but think that may also have to do with Tomlinson still not looking 100%. Mijovic need to look inside first then allow her outside game to open up. A few air balls there.

Anyway congrats to Townsville. Clearly the better team when it mattered. Looked after the ball, crashed the board and found some range with their shots.

Good luck to both teams in game 2, but I hope the Lynx taste success and win.

burton once again showing her worth, not only in the Lynx starting 5 but the Opals squad as well. How long is it going to take for someone to realise she just isn't worth her weight? Tomlinson should start over her in the 5. It's just so damn friggin frustrating to watch

28-7 in the 4th quarter.
That'll do it every time :-/

Nice link luuuc!

Lol! And the commentators were telling us how good she was on the glass.
Somethings going on...

Great effort by Burton so far. At half time she has held Batkovic to just 17 points, while hauling in a monstrous 0 rebounds herself.

whoever wins this game wins the series

Going to the game, hope it's a double for Perth

i like trinity, brighton and choncordia for the title...