Tucker confident of bowing out with championship

VETERAN Rockingham Flames star Kaye Tucker would love to end her career this year with a women's SBL championship and with the way her team has started 2014 she sees no reason why that can't eventuate.

The Flames have been simply on fire to open the 2014 women's SBL season beating the Perth Redbacks, Willetton Tigers, Mandurah Magic and Joondalup Wolves by an average of 27.5 points to be sitting atop the standings after three rounds.

The 30-year-old Tucker, a former MVP of the league in 2011, has announced that 2014 will be her last season and she has started in good form again with 8.7 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.3 assists a game, but it has been the other Rockingham players who have stepped up that have made the difference.

Samantha Whitcomb, Darcee Garbin, Talisia Bourne, Jacinta Bourne and Tarsha Fletcher have all been terrific early in the new season.

"We have started better than expected," Tucker said.

"We thought our first four games were going to be pretty tough especially with Willetton and Wanneroo in the mix, but he have come out and exceeded our expectations and done extremely well. We are very excited with where we sit at the moment."

Tucker also loves the fight in her team this year – highlighted in a come from behind win last weekend over the Joondalup Wolves.

"I would love to win a championship. I have done everything else and I would love to finish with an SBL grand final win, and I think this year we have got a team to do that," Tucker said.

"Over the last three seasons we made a grand final and got absolutely smashed in that, but last Sunday we proved that we are a different team this year. We actually have a lot of fight in us. We were down by 20 points at half-time but we came back and absolutely dug deep to fight and we stuck together, and did the hard yards to find a way to win.

"The last few years, we might have dropped our heads and started bickering, but we didn’t this time. To get the job done, is a different side of Rockingham that we haven’t had the last few years so it's pretty excited. If we don't win a grand final this year then we haven’t achieved our goal."

Whitcomb might have not have been shooting that great from long range in the first three and-a-half games, but turned on a clinic last Sunday in the second half against the Wolves.

"Sam is insane. She didn’t have the best first three games of the season and was pretty disappointed in herself without hitting a three over those games, but in the second half against Wanneroo she absolutely came out on fire," Tucker said.

"That's why she is here and she absolutely killed it. I was just laughing as we ran back down the court. Wanneroo was trying everything by going under and over, and tyring to double her but nothing could stop her in that second half."

Tucker certainly isn’t surprised that Whitcomb can dominate the league like she is either given the amount of work she puts in.

"She is in the gym every day and works out with Cooper and Taylor from the men's program a lot. She works for her talent and is in there putting up shots every single day. The benefit with her is that she isn’t just a shooter," she said.

"She can get to the rim as well so if people close out on her three, she can still get to the basket, create her own shot and bring her teammates into the game by making the passes. She is a pretty complete player and we are very lucky to get her services again this season."

The Flames now have the Week 4 bye before taking on the Collie Crane Hire South West Slammers the following week.

"Personally I'm pretty happy with the bye. I am pretty sore after the first few weeks and I think it has come at the right time for me, and the rest of the girls as well. We have been training hard and we have worked up to this because we knew the bye was coming," Tucker said.

"We will have five or six days off to freshen up before playing next Friday night. I don’t think the bye will affect us badly and it's most probably good just to freshen up especially going into it on a high. We are positive after our start and I don’t think it's a bad thing having a weekend off."

Article by Chris Pike




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