THE women's Wanneroo Wolves are on the hunt for a first SBL title since 1995 tonight at the WA Basketball Centre and experienced guard Whitney Perret is hoping to win her third championship and first with the Wolves.

The 25-year-old guard previously played in three grand finals for two championships with the Perry Lakes Hawks before moving to Wanneroo in 2008.

The Wolves women's team has a good record in SBL grand final having won three of their four appearances in the championship-decider, but the last title came in 1995 on the back of wins also in 1990 and 1992.

Wanneroo was on top of the standings for much of the 2013 regular season before dropping to third coming into the finals.

However, the Wolves have had a terrific playoff campaign having beaten the Stirling Senators in two games, and then overcoming the second-placed grand finalists from last year the Rockingham Flames in three semi-final matches.

That sees the Wolves join their men's team in the grand final for 2013 this Friday night at the WA Basketball Centre up against the Kalamunda Eastern Suns.

Even though Wanneroo did beat Kalamunda in both meetings during the regular season by 17 and two points respectively, Perret doesn’t necessarily mean that will have a big bearing on the grand final result.

However, she is certainly excited to have her team in the grand final along with the Wanneroo men.

"It's pretty surreal actually. The club is probably very hectic trying to organise tickets for everyone and everything like that," Perret said.

"It's pretty hard coming into finals considering everyone just brings their A-game and it doesn’t matter really what happened during the regular season.

"Having said that, it does give us a little extra confidence considering we have beaten them throughout the season but anything can happen come finals time."

Wanneroo cruised through its quarter-final match-up against Stirling with 84-59 and 75-68 victories, but the first two games with Rockingham in the semi finals were split setting up the decider last Saturday night in Rockingham.

After being outplayed on Friday, the Wolves turned it around on Saturday to win 60-52 in impressive style.

"I think we did make a few adjustments on the Saturday. In Friday's game, it was a bit more that we just let them get away from us and we got a bit overwhelmed, and at some points during the game were a bit more complacent than we should have," Perret said.

"They got out to a 20-point lead and we had to chase them the rest of the game. We lacked a bit of urgency early on in that game and it took us a while to get their lead down to the 10 points that it ended up being.

"Then on Saturday night we had that motivation knowing it was our last chance and there was a bit more of a crowd there too so it was good to have that support to spur us on."

Wanneroo did well to keep Rockingham's Samantha Whitcomb relatively quiet in last Saturday's Game 3 of the semi-finals to book a spot in the grand final, and now the attention turns to trying to limit the influence of Kalamunda's Jennie Rintala in particular.

"We did a bit of a rotation on Sam and we worked with Chelsea Burns and Shani Amos. They both took charge of trying to keep her a bit quieter than normal and we've basically been using our scout, and the guards are getting used to being on a player like that at any point," Perret said.

"Jennie is obviously a key player for them and I imagine Ainsleigh or even Casey Lockwood will get the job on her. Throughout the season, Ainsleigh has had her and done a relatively job good so I imagine she will spend the most time up against her."

Nikita-Lee Martin has had an outstanding season for the Wolves having averaged 15.2 points and 5.5 rebounds while taking her game to even another level so far in the finals, and Perret is hoping that she has one more big game left in her for the grand final.

"She has been amazing," Perret said.

"She is just completely in-form and doing a great job for us. Let's hope she keeps it up for one more game now."

Article by Chris Pike