WANNEROO Wolves women's SBL coach Vlad Alava was disappointed to see his team miss out on a top-two finish but none of that matters now ahead of a mouth-watering quarter-final match-up with the Stirling Senators.

For much of the 2013 women's SBL season, the Wolves looked on target to finish the standings on top or at the very least in second position but losing their last two regular season games saw the Rockingham Flames and Willetton Tigers both slip ahead of them.

That means the Wolves finished with a 16-6 record to be in third position and setting up a quarter-final battle against the 11-11 Stirling Senators with the series beginning this Saturday night at Warwick Leisure Centre.

The series then turns to the Joondalup Basketball Stadium for Game 2 next Saturday night and then on Sunday for Game 3 if it's required.

Wanneroo coach Alava knows that the Stirling team coached by Glenn Ellis and featuring the likes of Taylor Lilley, Amber Land and Tegan Walker (if she plays) is going to be hard get past.

"Glenn always gets his team primed up and with Stirling being my former team there are still a lot of girls there who I coached over the last three years in his program. That means it's always going to be fun and we certainly are going to be making sure that we are prepared for what Glenn throws at us," Alava said.

"We are aware that we have gone quite well in terms of wins and losses away from home, but finals is a different type of ball game so as much as we are going to be playing away to Stirling who have a massive crowd who follows them around, we are going to have to be on our A-game to get that win first up."

Given the fact that the Wolves looked likely to at least finish in the top-two for most of the season and were on top for a significant time meant losing the last two games to drop to third spot was disappointing, but in the end doesn't matter now that the finals are about to begin.

"Saying I'm disappointed is probably accurate but the league is that tight that on any given night you can get any given result and that has ended up with us dropping our last two games and dropping from first to third," he said.

"Obviously coming into the program for the first year the goal was always to try and cement a top-four spot.

"During the course of the season we were floating around that one or two spot for the majority of the year but the way the results have turned out for us over the last couple of games we ended up finishing third."

While Alava has stars like Casey Lockwood, Shani Amos and Nikita-Lee Martin at his disposal, it has been Chelsea Burns who has perhaps impressed him the most by averaging 7.1 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 2.9 steals a game this season.

"She (Burns) is what I call a stats filler. There will be some games where she scores double-digits and some games where she doesn’t, but more often than not she will get five-plus across four different stat areas," Alava said.

"Just her experience and her poise on the court is something that you can't teach and it's all to do with her experiences over the last couple of years. She is certainly a very valuable asset for us heading into the finals."

Article by Chris Pike