DANDENONG headed to the Christmas break in the best way possible shaking off some careless first half errors to take a 102-79 win over the Sydney Uni Flames.
The Flames kept in the contest, despite backing up from playing Friday night against Bulleen, but the relentless Rangers pressure eventually overwhelmed them as Dandenong fired a 37-24 last quarter to take the 23-point win.
Jenna O’Hea finished 2012 emphatically – knocking down 35 points, including four three-point bombs, and also had six rebounds and six assists.
The Rangers’ other general, Kath McLeod, was superb as per usual, with 22 points, six assists and five rebounds and Steph Cumming (12 points) and Carley Mijovic (11) rounded out the double-digit scorers.
Dandenong coach Mark Wright was impressed overall with the victory, but thought the Rangers had a few things to work on leading into the post-Christmas remainder of the season.
“Obviously happy with the result – wearing Sydney down in the end like we did, hopefully it justified the way we played,” Wright said.
“There are still things to work on for us – we can still get better.
“If we can slowly but surely edge that stuff away (turnovers and errors) and if we can play our style of basketball over 35 minutes rather than over 25 minutes, we’ll be harder and harder to beat.”
With a bye slated for this week, giving the Rangers an earlier break than the other WNBL clubs, Wright said he could leave his starters on a bit longer and let them hit the big totals.
“There’s a reason for that – not only were they playing well, but they deserve to have a game where everything goes well for them and it did today (Saturday), so it was important to leave them out there and let them play,” Wright said.
“There’s a bye next week for us, so it didn’t hurt them (O’Hea and McLeod) playing the extra minutes and they came out of it uninjured so it worked for us,” he said.
Heading into the break with an 11-3 record, sitting second in the league, Wright said the only sour point to the year so far is dropping all three matches to the Spirit.
“If someone says you’re going to be 11-3 at the 14-game mark, you’d say ‘yeah, pretty good’, it just so happens we lost those three games to Bendigo,” Wright said.
“That being said and done, as the season goes on, hopefully we keep improving.
“We don’t fear Bendigo – we’re just disappointed we haven’t beaten them a couple of times.
“It’s good for them and we look forward to hopefully playing them in the finals.”
Dandenong heads to Canberra after the break on Friday 4 January to face the Capitals, potentially for the first time this season with star centre Lauren Jackson, then backs up the next night to face Sydney.
