Perth Lynx star Amy Atwell admits they were well below their best during WNBL win over Geelong United

Perth Lynx star Amy Atwell has declared her team got out of jail during their 80-77 win over Geelong United on Sunday after being outplayed for the majority of the game. The Lynx extended their winning streak to six matches, and their 12th victory for the season means they will now play finals, but Atwell was far from satisfied. Perth had 20 turnovers, gave up 22 offensive rebounds and survived a dramatic final flurry from United to claim the victory. Geelong were without star pair Keely Froling and Monique Conti while the Lynx were at full strength. Atwell said they were fortunate to get away with the win. “When the other team has really good players out, there’s a tendency to drop your intensity and we spoke about that pre-game and said ‘do not do that’,” she said “But I think they outworked us for 38 minutes of that game. They won the rebounding, they won all the hustle plays and we definitely got out of jail.” The game looked over when the Lynx led by seven points with less than 30 seconds remaining. But then they gave up a three-pointer, followed up by committing a turnover and watched in horror as Geelong hit another three-pointer to make it just a one-point game with 9.3 seconds remaining. But Atwell remained calm as Geelong sent her to the free throw line. The Olympic bronze medallist moved into the starting five for the first time since recovering from a knee injury and top scored with 22 points for the day. Miela Sowah scored 14 points, Anneli Maley had another double-double with 11 points and 11 rebounds while Laeticia Amihere stepped up at both ends in the last quarter to finish with 12 points and 13 rebounds. “She definitely stepped up for us, got us some offensive rebounds and that was really important,” Atwell said. The Lynx entered the game on a five-game winning streak and knowing one more win would qualify them for finals. But they are more concerned about overtaking Bendigo on top of the ladder and they’ll get the chance to do that when they play the Spirit on Wednesday. “They always say it is a race to 12 wins but our work doesn’t stop now,” Atwell said. “This is just the beginning for us Getting to 12 wins is nice but we’ve got to switch focus quickly because we come up against Bendigo on Wednesday.”