IT would be easy to look at the Rockingham Flames and focus on Sami Whitcomb, Darcee Garbin and Ifunanya Ibekwe being keys to their quest for an SBL championship three-peat but the depth of Ryan Petrik's team is an often overlooked strength.

On the back of winning the last two Women's SBL championships, the Orange Autos Rockingham Flames have again had another strong 2016 regular season finishing in second position with an 18-4 record to be just a game behind the Joondalup Wolves and one ahead of the Willetton Tigers.

That sets up Rockingham to take on the Perth Redbacks in the quarter finals before a potential semi-final battle against the winner of the Tigers series against the Lakeside Lightning.

But it has been a season where the Flames have only had their full squad available on very few occasions with Ibekwe only playing eight games while Garbin, Tarsha Fletcher, Lizel Buckley, Talisia Bourne, Jacinta Bourne, Ariana Hetherington, Whitcomb and Ashlee Sidebottom all missed two or more games along the way.

Ibekwe provides Flames with something SBL doesn't have 

The only Flames player to take part in every game of 2016 was a recruit from Willetton this season, Ella Kennedy. That depth of being able to cover missing players and still finish second and only lose four games shows that there is much more to Rockingham than the three big WNBL stars.

There's no doubting the quality of Whitcomb, Garbin and Ibekwe but there are a host of players key to the Flames' championship hopes.

Kennedy has had a terrific first season with 4.6 points and 6.0 rebounds a game while Sidebottom has proven crucial with 9.6 points and 4.3 boards and Jacinta Bourne has stood tall at 12.2 points,5.8 rebounds, 3.1 steals and 2.7 assists made the more remarkable considering she is living in Kalgoorlie.

Fletcher has been the standout for the Flames from three-point territory this season shooting over 45 per cent while Buckley, Talisia Bourne, Amanda Pether and Shelby Meola have all been important along the way.

Petrik is proud of the depth he has built with his group and he certainly knows it's far from a team that relies on its stars.

"Ella Kennedy was a piece we saw playing for Willetton’s D League team but couldn’t fit in to their SBL side, but she’s the kind of big we really like playing, and she’s been fantastic for us," Petrik said.

"Sidebottom and Pether both played for Sam and I with our State 20s silver medal team. Sidebottom might have been our best player at that tournament so we we’re always going to want to reunite at some point. As Sam jokingly pointed out, everyone then seemed to disappear as the season began.

"Jacinta Bourne has been the interesting one, she moved to Kalgoorlie before the season began and has literally flown in, played, and flown out again. She has obviously had no idea what we’ve been doing at times, but the impact she has on our team is huge.

"She takes such a load of Sami’s shoulders being another ball handler and creator, if you take a look at Sam’s games with Jacinta alongside her vs without her, I’m sure it would show how important JB is to us."

As for how the Flames have been able to keep their core group together to now have a chance to win a third straight championship, Petrik simply finds out if they will be there for the business end of the season. If they are he is happy to lock them in for another crack.

"After the grand final, our core crew from that 2015 team pretty much all came in and said 1 - we’re going again, 2 - we need more help, and 3 - I’m having a break. That crew had won us two rings, so if they wanted a break I think you have to let them have it," Petrik said.

"We simply asked them if you will you play enough to qualify for finals and if will you be here for the entire playoff campaign. if those are both a yes, let's have another crack at it."

Looking back on 11 months ago when the Flames beat the Tigers in the grand final to make it back-to-back titles, Petrik realised that they likely wouldn’t have prevailed had it not been for Whitcomb's massive performance of 41 points.

The Flames realised that the chance to add Ibekwe to the group was too good to pass up no matter how much of the season she would be available for, but more importantly to be a chance of making it a championship three-peat they had to change a lot of what they were doing.

Changing the offensive structure was the biggest change Petrik oversaw for his group and he has no doubt that helped the Flames' flexibility and their ability to make greater use of their tremendous depth.

"This is year eight for me now and we go into each season trying to work out what type of window we're in. If you are genuinely honest about it you are either a genuine chance of winning championship, you're a middle of the road team or you're rebuilding," Petrik said.

"We think we're in the championship window therefore we build our team based on the other contenders like Joondalup and Willetton. We changed our offence this year partly because of our new pieces, but a major reason was because of those two teams.

"Sam had to go berserk in the grand final for us to win and we think if we play that grand final 100 times, we probably win 10 of them playing like that. We had to change our offence because we couldn’t have Sam needing to go into hero mode trying to carry us every game.

"We changed it and obviously the addition of Ibekwe gives us tremendous flexibility because we can go big or small.

"We have been a small ball team for the best part of seven years and essentially we still are, it's just that we have a girl who is 6’3 who makes us look huge. Whilst we can still play four guards and one big, one of our guards is 6'3 so that gives us tremendous flexibility."

Article by Chris Pike
Photo by Mick Cronin