CASEY Mihovilovich has brought up 350 SBL games already this season and is proud that they are all with the Mandurah Magic with the veteran confident her well-performing team still has plenty of improvement left in 2014.

The Magic currently sit in third position on the women's SBL standings with an 8-2 record and now having won six straight matches to be just percentage behind the second-placed Lakeside Lightning.

Coming off just seven wins the last two years, Mandurah is having a tremendous 2014 campaign and the 32-year-old Mihovilovich is enjoying her basketball as much as ever in this current team, and to be playing alongside Hailey Dunham who has averaged 22.4 points and 9.4 rebounds in five games.

"We definitely have exceeded our expectations. We were aiming to win most of our games at home and half away, but we have actually won all our away games so far. We knew that when Hailey came on board we wanted to have won at least two games and we were two games ahead of that, and now having her she is just such an outstanding player," Mihovilovich said on SBL Radio on 91.3 SportFM.

"It's just amazing to play with her and all the other girls will benefit from her being here. We are still looking forward and we would like to finish as high as we can for the finals, but at the end of the day you need to win every single game and beat every team in the finals to be a championship-contender, and as long as we are there we know we are up for the challenge."

Mihovilovich's entire SBL career has been with the Mandurah Magic and in good and bad times, that is something she is tremendously proud about.

"Obviously we all play team sports to win and I have experienced the lows during my career, and I think that's helped my game and for Mandurah to be the fighters that we are. We will never give up in any game and we'll always try our best," she said.

"It is really nice when we are winning, though, and I keep playing because I love the game. It's something I've always done and I love it. It's great to be able to play in a great team for Mandurah and I've been lucky enough to play all my SBL games for Mandurah.

"That's something that a lot of people can't really say either. They have been my club, looked after and hopefully I have looked after them as well."

Mihovilovich is in the middle of an outstanding season herself so far averaging 20.6 points, 6.4 rebounds, 4.1 rebounds and 3.0 steals a game.

None of that is surprising.

What is a shock is that a troublesome Achilles hampered her all through 2013, didn’t allow her to do any running in the pre-season and has kept her off the training court for much of this season to date as well.

However, it hasn’t lowered her impact on game day and now that she feels the worst of the problem is behind her, she only expects to be able to perform even better for the rest of 2014.

"I have had a really good start to the season like we have as a team. I have been on the court and I have been touching the ball at practice which is always the most important thing," she said.

"As long as I've had a ball in my hand over pre-season then I know the fitness will come. I've just had to do a bit of alternative fitness other than the running. I'm not that consistent at the moment so I am hoping to be a better player in the second half of the season."

The Achilles problem certainly wasn’t fun for Mihovilovich, but she found a way to keep on top of it, stay fit and still be able to play at her regular high level.

"I'm old now so I have old-age injuries like Achilles tendonitis which I had for all of last year. I didn’t really train at all last season and would just play games, but this year I knew I might not have been able to play at all," Mihovilovich said.

"I actually didn’t run at all in the pre-season, I made sure I did a lot of yoga, bike riding and swimming. Now I'm only really just starting to do sprint work at training.

"My Achilles has been OK so that's allowed me to start doing it. This last pre-season wasn’t ideal because I love to run and keep fit, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that and had to listen to my body if I wanted to keep playing."

Article by Chris Pike