Townsville Fire have claimed the WNBL Championship, defeating Perth Lynx 108-105 in overtime to wrap up the grand final series in the second game.<\/p>\n
The Lynx \u2014 hoping to win their first WNBL title in 34 years \u2014started emphatically in front of a sold-out crowd in Perth, darting out to a six-point lead at quarter-time.<\/p>\n
The Fire weathered the storm, however, with captain Courtney Woods standing tall, despite copping a Han Xu elbow to the head during the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Her career-high 28 points \u2014 along with eight rebounds and seven assists \u2014 steered the Fire to their second title in four years.<\/p>\n
There were a staggering 41 lead changes during the game, with the Fire’s Miela Sowah (18 points) landing a three-pointer to tie the scores with 3.7 seconds remaining in regulation time.<\/p>\n
It was Sowah who rose to the occasion again, sinking a crucial basket with 7.4 seconds left in overtime to secure the win.<\/p>\n
Alicia Froling also provided fireworks, posting 25 points and eight rebounds, while back-up point guard Lucy Olsen had 15 points and five assists.<\/p>\n
The victory completes the Fire’s dominant season, in which they were minor premiers.<\/p>\n
They lost to Bendigo Spirit in last season’s grand final series.<\/p>\n
The Lynx went down 88-79 in game one in the best-of-three series on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The loss marks the Lynx’s third grand-final series defeat in five years after finishing runner-up in 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n
Han was typically inspirational with 18 points, nine rebounds and four blocks.<\/p>\n
Lynx teammate Anneli Maley recorded another double-double with 27 points and 19 rebounds.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Townsville Fire have claimed the WNBL Championship, defeating Perth Lynx 108-105 in overtime to wrap up the grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,726,9663,256588,256587,11288,134765,85,256586,69276],"class_list":{"0":"post-512520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-championship","12":"tag-courtney-woods","13":"tag-game-two","14":"tag-grand-final","15":"tag-perth-lynx","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-townsville-fire","18":"tag-wnbl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512520","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=512520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}