\u201cGoing into the start of the year, we had the youngest team, but we also had all this expectation that we were going to win the championship,\u201d Seebohm said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re one of the few teams that don\u2019t have an Olympian or an Opal that\u2019s played at a World Cup or done any of those things. We\u2019ve got a lot of unheralded superstars.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur whole goal is always to play our best basketball, and I truly believe we did that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was one of the toughest games I\u2019ve ever seen in the WNBL. Surely, that has to go down as one of the greatest finals games ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Perth, their hopes of claiming a first title in 34 years are over after also going down 88-79 in game one of the best-of-three series on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The loss also marks the Lynx\u2019s third grand final defeat in five years after falling short in 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n
Han was typically inspirational with 18 points, nine rebounds and four blocks, while Lynx teammate Anneli Maley recorded another double-double with 27 points and 19 boards.<\/p>\n
Alex Ciabattoni (23 points) and Ally Wilson (13 points, nine assists, nine rebounds) were also busy.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can roll over, curl into a ball, suck your thumb and just cry, or you can dig your heels in and try again,\u201d coach Ryan Petrik said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like a game that could have gone either way, and we had a chance to grab it.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, our chances didn\u2019t fall, and that\u2019s the price.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lynx went on an 11-2 early run, but struggled to find the net in the second term and Townsville pounced to surge to a 50-45 lead at the main break.<\/p>\n
Perth set up a thrilling finish after producing a 15-3 spurt in the third quarter, but it was Sowah\u2019s last-gasp shots that won Townsville the championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cGoing into the start of the year, we had the youngest team, but we also had all this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-511980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}