The Southern Design Sydney Uni Flames split last weekend’s road trip double header to Adelaide and Alice Springs, following a loss to Adelaide and an impressive win against the West Coast.
On Friday night the Flames began well against the third placed Adelaide Lightning, matching them for most of the first quarter before finishing the first quarter down by just five points.
From there the Lightning stamped their authority, outscoring the Flames by 14 points thanks to some strong defence, high percentage shooting and dominance on the boards. The Lightning were shooting the ball well from the perimeter, and the Flames found it difficult to match up against the size of Batkovic and Hodges on the inside.
The girls from Sydney Uni regrouped at half time and showed some great spirit to match it with the Lightning in the second half, but foul trouble, the speed of the game and a game in Alice Springs the following night saw all players hit the floor for some game time as the Flames went down 98-73.
The best for the Flames were Rohanee Cox with 14 points and April Sykes with 19 points, while defence and rebounding were again the problem for the Flames.
Just 24 hours later the Flames overcame a slow start to defeat the West Coast Waves 69-55 in Alice Springs.
The Flames turned a 10 point first quarter deficit into a five point lead at half-time, following a scintillating second quarter of basketball. Having made some necessary defensive adjustments at the quarter time break, the Flames came up with a series of valuable defensive stops that opened up their offensive play and the points flowed from there.
Solid half-court defence from Lauren King on the dangerous Perth bigs set the tone, whilst Jaimee Kennedy was also good in defense. Alicia Poto stepped up the defensive pressure once again. Poto scored 15 points and pulled down nine boards in a great captain’s game.
Katie-Rae Ebzery led the way with 25 points for the Flames, with some clutch baskets coming down the stretch, whilst April Sykes added 18 points and nine boards and was unstoppable in getting to the basket and mixing her play up with some top notch three point shooting.
In the end the Flames played a controlled game, lifting their defensive efforts in the second half to grab a much needed 14 point victory before their return match-up against the Waves this Saturday night at home to end the 2012/13 WNBL season.