By JARROD POTTER
A TALE of two halves, as it so often happens in basketball, fell Dandenong’s way in the women’s SEABL East conference elimination final – claiming a 67-48 runaway win over the Geelong Supercats.
Dandenong couldn’t hit their shots in the first half, with Geelong snaring a two-point lead at the half following some rampant moves from forward/centre Sara Blicavs (16 points, nine rebounds).
Everything clamped down in the second half – the defensive pressure Rosie Fadljevic placed on Blicavs proved her WNBL credentials and helped negate the Supercats’ leading scoring option.
Dandenong was shooting at better than .500 as the Supercats tried in vain to negate the Rangers’ scoring spread.
Guard duo Amelia Todhunter and Aimie Clydesdale fired off 16 points apiece and the Geelong resolve was broken on the back of a 45-24 second half favouring the Rangers.
“In the second half our shots just started to drop,” Dandenong coach Paul Flynn said.
“Our message at half time was positive – we hadn’t put many points on the board, but Geelong hadn’t done that either.
“It was a really good team effort – four players in double digits which make us hard to guard – don’t know which options to shut down.”
Faith Probst reeled in her 10th double-double of the season – with another stellar performance under the basket to claim 11 points and 12 rebounds.
Lauren Scherf continued to wow those who have only started seeing her play – a 15-point, 10-rebound performance another sign of things to come for the 17-year-old centre.
“What Lauren gave us off the bench was fantastic from a production point of view and even got the whole crowd on their feet when she went coast to coast,” Flynn said.
Flynn said Fadljevic was primed all week to face Sara Blicavs and keeping the WNBL calibre centre to 33 per cent shooting.
“Sara Blicavs, as we’ve seen in WNBL season, when she starts to feel it, she lights it up – Rosie has done a really good job defensively last few weeks and given her some big assignments,” Flynn said.
“All week she was primed, ready to go and to her credit she came out and did a phenomenal job.”
Dandenong faces Sandringham in a preliminary final on Saturday night at Sandringham Basketball Stadium.
DANDENONG’S SEABL men’s team ambled past Sandringham with a 105-87 win.
The Sabres rattled the Rangers early – taking a 31-35 lead at the first change, but Dandenong started pegging them back through the stellar work of Daequon Montreal (34 ponits, seven rebounds) and Tony Lewis (17 points, 11 rebounds) – with Lewis averaging 16.1 points and 9.6 rebounds a game in an ultra-consistent season.
Andrew Harms returned from injury to post 22 points, six assists while Brent Hobba was influential under the basket with 15 points and eight rebounds.
Sandringham exploded in the last quarter – hitting only eight points and waywardly throwing anything that went to hand, while Dandenong hit 26 points to ease past and advance to face the Geelong Supercats this Saturday night in Geelong.
