THE Rockingham Flames had a winning Friday night against the Stirling Senators as the Women gear up for a battle for second against Willetton and the Men look to continue their momentum against the Tigers after a remarkable turnaround following a horror first 10 minutes.

The Orange Autos Rockingham Flames began the night at Warwick Stadium with a 93-55 victory over the Bethanie Stirling Senators that sees them improve to a 16-3 record ahead of a Saturday night clash with the Willetton Tigers at home that could decide second place.

The Flames only used an unwell Sami Whitcomb for 13 minutes on Friday but it quickly became the Ifunanya Ibekwe show as she put together an eye-catching performance proving she can play inside and rebound, run the ball at great pace, be a strong defensive presence, shoot and get to the rim.

She finished with 21 points, nine rebounds, four assists and three steals.

But coach Ryan Petrik spread the minutes around with nobody playing more than Darcee Garbin's 23. She finished with 17 points and four boards with Tarsha Fletcher hitting four threes on the way to 12 points.

Petrik was happy to get a good team performance out of a squad that is underestimated for its depth considering how good Whitcomb, Ibekwe and Garbin are.

"Sam has actually been sick all week. Obviously she had time to write an article, but she has been sick and we wanted to just get her to have a quick run to get ready to play Willetton," he said.

"We just wanted her to be able to play 30 minutes on Saturday night. We do have a deep squad and we think we have 10 or 11 legit SBL players so we shouldn’t ever have to rely on everyone. That was the beauty of rotating the girls hard."

For Petrik, Friday was a game he just wanted to get through unscathed with all attention now turning to the grand final rematch against the Tigers at Mike Barnett Sports Complex.

"We knew Stirling was missing Bestry and Walker, and Armstrong is playing with one arm so that's 60 per cent of their starting five. Not to be rude, we were more worried with Willetton tomorrow night as well," Petrik said.

"Every game is important but there's only two or three games that are really, really big and that's what the Willetton game is.

"It's a two v three fight, winner gets home court advantage in the second round and obviously it's a grand final rematch. They smacked us early when there were seven of us missing so we wanted to get this game over and done with, and focus on that game."

Willetton did win the first grand final rematch emphatically to open the season but Rockingham was a vastly different team that is now.

Petrik can't wait for the game and is not shying away from its importance with the difference between finishing second and third significant.

"In reality first is probably gone, Joondalup has the head to head on us and you wouldn’t have thought they'd lose again. So it's second v three and if we lose, Willetton will be on the same losses as us and have the head to head on us. It's really important to get home court," Petrik said.

"Willetton has never been our best away court venue as evidenced by us getting smacked there to start to the year, so it's a really big game. On top of that, from our girls' point of view we built this team for eight weeks of the year and that's starting this week.

"This is the first time we've had everyone all year and that's by design, it's not an excuse. So we need to see what we can actually do and we have an eight-week window to fix things.

"Obviously if you have your full team from Week 1 you have 20 weeks of the season and five weeks of the finals to fix it, but we have eight weeks total. We're in a mad rush to get some rotations and everything sorted out."

Then in the Men's contest at Warwick Stadium, there was plenty of spice all night between the Senators and Flames right throughout the evening, and it even continued afterwards.

With both teams fighting to remain in the top four race, the Senators got off to a remarkable start racing to a 33-11 lead with 10 minutes gone in the game.

They had completely dominated every area doing as they pleased offensively, not allowing the Flames to get into their offence or even get the ball up the floor and getting seven fouls called on Taylor Land, Cooper Land and Chudier Pal.

But a timeout by coach Mark Utley began to see things turnaround and the Flames scored the last eight points of the first quarter.

Rockingham dominated the rest of the game outscoring Stirling 94-69 over the game's final 38 minutes to improve to a 14-9 record to close in on the 15-7 Tigers and 15-8 Buccaneers.

The Flames certainly got under the skin of the Senators and that worked in their favour tremendously well and Cooper Land capitalised by finishing with 45 points, 14 rebounds and three assists.

Taylor Land was just as influential as a leader and with his niggle along with 11 points, eight assists and four rebounds while Ryan Godfrey contributed 16 points (four assists), Andrew Bowman 13 (seven boards), Chudier Pal 10 (10 rebounds) and Jarryd Griffin six (eight boards).

"We've got a lot of belief and I had to just give them a bit of a serve to get them going and getting them to wakeup, and doing the little things. We do have a lot of belief," Utley said.

"In last year's finals, we were down 20 to Cockburn and were able to turn that around and with our guys I just said to them that the start wasn’t good enough, and they need to play hard.

"They respond to that. They're Rockingham kids, they're pretty hard and they like honestly. They knew it wasn’t good enough and they had the respect to come out and turn it around."

Utley has no doubt that the fitness and depth of his team played a large part in them being able to come back from the early 22-point deficit and sustain the effort the rest of the way.

"A lot of things go into that and I reckon fitness is one of them. We knew we had a deeper bench and we played 11 and they played seven. Our import Cooper Land in the off-season went over to take up cross fit and did a lot of kickboxing and things to get himself fit," he said.

"So his aerobic fitness is good to play those extra minutes and we needed him, and I thought he was sensational with 45.

"I said to him in the off-season that he needed to go away and get back to where he was a three-man in college at that sort of fitness. He did a great job tonight on Majstrovich and Ellis who are quality players."

Things don’t get any easier for Rockingham against Willetton on Saturday night at home with a win for the Flames to further put them in the top four race with games against the Perry Lakes Hawks and East Perth Eagles over the final two rounds.

"They don’t play as deep as other teams as well," Utley said.

"They do have the new import Funches to give them a big guy off the bench but we're going to look to defensively push Damien Scott, Kyle Armour and Jay Bowie to get up in the lanes and get under them to try and increase the turnover count."

Article by Chris Pike
Photo by Mick Cronin