By Justin Robertson
DANDENONG Rangers bowed out of the 2011 finals race without a whimper against Logan at Dandenong last week.
From a team that were expected to go deep in the finals series on the back of their exciting list, the 83-73 loss was unexpected and a bitter pill to swallow.
“Obviously you’d rather go out fighting, but we didn’t, it was very disappointing,” Rangers coach Mark Wright said. “We were getting plenty of shots, but our shooting went off and when you are playing quality teams during finals you can’t afford to do that.”
The Rangers flew out of the blocks early and held a convincing 21-7 lead during the first quarter, but were unable to keep up their break-neck style of basketball, as Logan chipped away at the deficit with sharp long-range shooting to peg the scores back to 23-17 at the break.
The second and third periods were arm wrestles, before Logan broke the game open in the final term scoring 22-13, as their three point gun – Sarah Graham – cut loose hitting six from eight three pointers for the evening and ended Dandenong’s run at this year’s title. The Rangers’ Kathleen Macleod (24 points) and Abby Bishop (22) shone despite their 10-point loss in the elimination final.
Wright said although he’d rather be playing another week of finals, was happy with where the team was headed.
“We certainly achieved what we wanted to do and that was to make finals,” he said. “Obviously with the talent in the team we thought we could have done better, so from that point of view it was disappointing.”
When the WNBL final is finished, Wright said he’ll then start to look around for potential talls to help play a role for next season.
“We’ll try to bolster up the team with a key centre, which is a glaring hole that needs to be filled,” he said. “We need a legitimate post player in there, so that’s one of the things we’ll try and fix straight away for next year.”
