Reigning BBL Champions Newcastle Eagles started the season exactly as they finished it, top of the BBL Championship Table with wins over the Cheshire Jets on Friday evening, and a tight 86-90 win, north of the border, against perennial rivals, Glasgow Rocks, on Sunday.
The game was nip and tuck throughout, with a tough long ranger on the buzzer from Charles Smith giving the Eagles an 18-21 edge going into first quarter break. This continued into the second stanza, as the sides ended the first half with the Eagles shading a 42-40 score line. Newcastle managed to break away in the third, as they led 59-67 going into the final ten minutes, and held on, despite resurgence from the Rocks via new signing Jessie Sapp, to seal the four point victory.
Games between these two sides are always intense, and Eagles Player-Coach Fabulous Flournoy said he expected no different: ‘The Rocks are a tough outfit, and the game was played in a rough fashion, as it always is between us and them. It always comes down to the wire, and it was down to Jessie Sapp having an extremely good second half, that they ran us so close.’ It is clear that Flournoy highly rates the Rocks new signing, but he also had praise for both Rob Yanders and Sterling Davis. He added: ‘As always, their team is based around Rob (Yanders) and he had a phenomenal game. I also thought that Sterling did a great job of balancing playing and coaching.’
Elsewhere on Sunday, a buzzer-beating three from Paul Peterson that after their disappointing 85-74 loss to the Eagles on Friday night, the Cheshire Jets grabbed a 78-77 win over Marshall MK Lions.
Saturday evening also proved to be an exciting one in the BBL as a new-look Worthing Thunder side beat the Airwaves Plymouth Raiders by 20 points (104-84) thanks to a fine spread of scoring, as Petroslav Zafirov (22 points) was supported by Ville Makalainen (19) and Reggie Bratton and Sherrad Prezzie-Blue both had 18. Another solid victory came for the Guildford Heat, who in their first game under player-coach Chad McKnight beat PAWS London Capital 65-95.
Meanwhile, in a repeat of last year’s play off quarter final, the Jelson Homes DMU Leicester Riders were victorious over the Sheffield Sharks, 113-93, thanks to 32 points from Bradd Wierzbicki and a triple-double of 19 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists from debutant Tack Minor. The Marshall MK Lions were also a happy side, as BBL stalwart Mike New led his side, who are still without Point Guard EJ Harrison, to a 94-81 win over Worcester Wolves at Bletchley Leisure Centre.
GB positive despite defeats – BASKETBALL
In hindsight, showcasing the GB team that has started attracting considerable attention in a great setting like the O2 Arena and against three bona fide EuroBasket qualifiers was a good idea.
Unfortunately the timing (the original schedule put GB up against Michael Jackson’s farewell tour) meant the team was playing its first games of the summer in front of expectant fans but, perhaps inevitably, was somewhat rusty.
To do it without five of the team’s frontline players (Luol Deng, Robert Archibald, Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Andy Betts and Flinder Boyd, the latter for most of the weekend) was doubly unfortunate, but coach Chris Finch does not accept that starting preparation for next month’s EuroBasket finals in Poland with three home defeats is a setback.
“It didn’t enter into my mindset in planning – I didn’t think it added any pressure on us at all,” he said flatly at the final press conference of the weekend.
“I wanted us to have training camp and then come and play right here. When you play in a venue like this you’re somewhat locked into the available dates too.”
A stress fracture of the leg has ruled out Deng, Archibald is just short of a return from hernia surgery, Mensah-Bonsu is said to be on the point of signing an NBA contract for next season and Betts is back in Spain with his family for personal reasons.
“We have the players – we just don’t have all of them here,” said Finch. “But if we wanted easy games we could have stayed in Division B – this is what we wanted, this is what we earned. I expected us to come here, compete and play hard and get better and I think we did that.”
Finch need not worry about there being too many easy games in the next warm-up tournament, which starts in Seville on Wednesday.
In addition to Olympic silver medallists Spain, GB will play Lithuania, who made it to the semi-finals in Beijing and Slovenia, a team boasting an abundance of NBA talent. Archibald, Boyd and possibly even Betts and Mensah-Bonsu could feature in that tournament
Once Deng was ruled out for the summer, the wide variety of offensive permutations GB could generate from his creativity were lost and Finch’s squad spent much of the weekend in Greenwich examining the alternatives, with mixed degrees of success.
The bad news was that the passing and shooting of the guards produced little in the way of significant scoring contributions all weekend.
“I actually like our guard combination – we just have to find a way of getting them some shots,” said Finch.
The best contribution was the 16 points against Israel from Mike Lenzly, who is back with the squad after missing last summer.
Finch has plenty to think about as GB warm up for Poland
“Mike’s back in the mix and he’s much sharper right now,” said Finch. “I told him I wanted him to be more aggressive. Having him back is big – it gives us another guard with experience who can make shots.”
Another plus from the weekend were the first senior appearances for 20-year-old Dan Clark, whose mother played for England and whose father was, until recently, the GB women’s coach.
Raw on Friday on debut against Poland, he made significant contributions in Saturday’s second half against Turkey as the pedigree kicked in and looked comfortable for the whole of Sunday’s game against Israel.
“With Dan, we’re looking for a little bit of a breakout like Joel (Freeland) had last year,” said Finch. “When he gets in game shape, a lot of his shots will fall for him. He probably hasn’t played so many games back-to-back since he was in our under-18s.”
Freeland, who found himself playing at centre in Betts’ absence and carrying a lot of the scoring load, was GB’s best player of the weekend, with the ever-energetic Nick George a close second.
Freeland’s maturity and strength at the defensive end belied the fact that he is still only 22 years old. He will join Euroleague giants Malaga next season but his consistent development leaves little doubt he is destined for the NBA.
“It’s been great for me from an experience standpoint,” he said. “I haven’t had that sort of pressure on me before but I enjoyed every minute of it.
“I feel like I’m going to grow, the team’s going to grow and when Poland comes around we’re going to be ready.”
Ian Legrand appointed as GB Men Sitting Volleyball Head Coach
In recent months, Volleyball England has taken over the management of the Great Britain Sitting Volleyball Programme, from the British Volleyball Federation (BVF). The programme has been shifted from the BVF to sit within Volleyball England’s Playground to Podium Initiative funding within their 2009-13 Strategic plan.
These are encouraging times in Sitting Volleyball with a number of new appointments to help strengthen GB’s chance of medals in the Paralympics 2012. Ian Legrand has now been appointed as the Great Britain Men’s Sitting Volleyball Head Coach. Ian has been involved with coaching standing Volleyball at all levels, with his most previous appointment being in charge of the England Men since 2001.
Matt RogersMatt Rogers has also been appointed as the Sitting Volleyball Development Manager to oversee all aspects of the development of the sport from Youth through to Great Britain. Since the establishment of the Great Britain programme in 2006, the squads have been coached by Josef Banfi. Josef has now stepped aside and is now on board as the programmes’ Technical Consultant.
The BVF would like to thank Josef for his time and for the committment he showed to the programme, ensuring the development of the athletes over the last two years, and we look forward to continuing to work with Josef in his new capacity.
Jozef BanfiIan, his appointed team staff, and the playing squad are now deep in preparation for the European Championships in Poland, starting on the 21 September. He comments: “We are all very excited by the changes within Sitting Volleyball. With the 2012 Paralympics fast approaching we are building a great set up to be potential medal contenders. I’m pleased to say that the future is looking bright”.
BBC TO AIR GB’S EUROBASKET GAMES LIVE
The Standard Life GB men’s games will be aired live on both BBC online and the BBC Red Button.
Chris Finch’s side find themselves in the hardest group of the tournament – alongside Serbia, Slovenia and world champions Spain – knowing that only three teams can progress to the next round and now thanks to the BBC fans won’t have to be in Warsaw to witness the action firsthand.
log on to bbc.co.uk/basketball or hit your TV red button at the following times:
Monday 7 September, GB v Slovenia, 17:15
Tuesday 8 September, GB v Spain, 20:00
Wednesday 9 September, GB v Serbia, 20:15
Following the preliminary round of games, GB could find themselves in the qualifying round, where they would be joined by three of Group D’s teams; Poland, Turkey, Lithuania and Bulgaria.
Should this be the case then games will be on the following dates, with times to be confirmed:
Saturday 12 September
Monday 14 September
Wednesday 16 September
From there all nations will enter the quarter finals.
BBC Sport will also be showing highlights from each day of the event, which runs from September 7 to 20, on its website.
GB’S EUROBASKET JOURNEY ENDED BY SERBIA
Britain’s 77-59 loss to Serbia, on the third and final night of preliminary group games in Warsaw, saw them eliminated from the European Championships.
