Road warriors Townsville go top of WNBL
Chris Pike |
The Townsville Fire are becoming road warriors this WNBL season, climbing to top spot despite having not played at home yet.
The rise to the top has come after handing the Perth Lynx their first defeat, 79-70.
Playing their fourth of five road games to open the season, Townsville improved to 3-1 with a dominant performance at Perth’s High Performance Centre with former Lynx guard Miela Sowah scoring a career-best 26 points.
Townsville made a blistering start with the opening eight points before Lauren Cox drained three triples to give them the 26-16 quarter-time edge.
It was a fluctuating second term. The Lynx briefly grabbed the lead after opening up with a 19-4 run only for the Fire to steady with a Sowah spectacular with 19 points for her team to be up 44-43 at the half.
Townsville pushed back out to a 12-point lead by three quarter-time having put the clamps on the Lynx who managed just seven points on 3-of-16 shooting the entire third quarter.
The Fire maintained control the rest of the way for the nine-point win despite only shooting 38 per cent from the field, but they did hold the Lynx to 36 per cent.
Along with Sowah’s career-best 26 points with seven rebounds with 4-of-10 long-range shooting, Alex Fowler had 16 points and nine rebounds for Townsville with Courtney Woods adding 12 points, nine assists and six boards.
Cox finished with 11 points, 12 rebounds and a monstrous seven blocks.
Fire coach Shannon Seebohm was proud of his team’s efforts on the road.
“To come to Perth and get a win, you’re always happy with that. They are a great side, and Ryan (Petrik) is a great coach,” he said.
“Obviously it’s tricky because they are a playing a little differently this year but we’re always happy to get a win especially after we had a tough loss the other night against Southside.”
Perth came into the game without point guard Alex Ciabattoni with a foot injury and then lost superstar Ally Wilson halfway through the third quarter after taking a hit to the nose that had all the hallmarks of leaving it broken.
The Lynx still kept fighting with Anneli Maley showing the way with 21 points, 14 rebounds, four blocks and two assists.
Tegan Graham added 13 points and two assists, and Brianna Turner 12 points, seven rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals.
Petrik knew it was always going to be tough when Wilson got hurt with Ciabattoni already out.
“Obviously in the third (quarter) it started to hurt and once we lost Ally we completely lost the rudder so to speak without the two of them,” he said.
“We haven’t put a playbook in place without our point guards, but glass half-full, that’s the championship favourite at full strength and we hung with them for most of the night without two of our most important players.”
AAP
