BBL Game Report: Leicester Riders 90 Birmingham Knights 56
A BBL debut to forget
Leicester Rider’s have picked right back up where they left off last season with a comprehensive 90-56 victory over the new Birmingham franchise.
The Knights travelled to the John Sandford Centre knowing how tall a task they faced. Not only are they a team without any history on the court but what they faced in front of them on the court Saturday night was on another level.
Paul Douglas’s men managed to trade blows with the Riders for the majority of the first quarter, even taking the lead for 14 seconds (the only 14 seconds they led throughout the entire game.) But Leicester were just too strong, Jay Couisnard came flying out of the blocks with eight first quarter points and summer signing Rashad Hassan stamped his authority on the game with some great post-play on both ends of the floor.
Even the coaches were getting at it in the first period calling each other out over a contentious ‘tic tac’ plays only to be told to keep quiet by the refs. The Riders seemed to have taken control of the game very early on amassing a 23-11 lead only for Birmingham to shoot their way back to 24-20, in part due to some fantastic individual basketball by Emile Hopkins, a former player of Leicester who along with Brent Benson (24 points) gave the Knights their only real attacking outlet over the 40 minutes.
Once the second quarter began however Leicester started dominating, crowding and winning every rim battle whilst also managing to shoot the ball well from behind the line (44% on 12 from 27 on the night.)
From there on in the game became a training exercise, although Birmingham do seem competent at scoring the ball for brief moments, they were outclass, outskilled and outwitted from a basketball stand point and the drive back up to Birmingham must feel like a very slow trip after a night to forget like this.
Douglas has however looked to secure the BBL’s ‘noisiest coach’ award screaming instructions to his players all night to the point where his opposing coach Rob Paternostro seemed the more timid of the two. Douglas clearly believes his players can deliver more and maybe they can when they face an opposing team that don’t have title aspirations this season.
The night belonged to a few stand out performers, Jay Couisnard, only returning from America last week, and top scored with 21 in the game and was just insane on defence. Another would be the new Point Guard Anthony Downing who looked composed handling the ball, orchestrating the attack and even throwing up some highlight plays for the sell out crowd feeding Drew Sullivan with the Alley-Oop late in the third quarter. Downing managed 7 assists, 9 rebounds and 5 points, not far off from a triple-double. Last but not least, Rashad Hassan.
In 2012/13 the Riders had great energy and enthusiasm under the rim with guys like Anthony Rowe and Jamell Anderson but would sometimes lack the clinical touch, scoring those second or third chance points. In just 20 minutes he went 8/11 on shooting scoring 17 points grabbing 9 boards to go with a stellar debut performance.
Next up for the Riders is the match every fan in the league wants to see after such an exciting first weekend in the league as they travel to face Worcester Wolves next Friday night. Former Leicester star Zaire Taylor will be stepping foot on court with the aim of upsetting his former employers early on in the season.
When asked about the Worcester result however Coach Paternostro said: “I kind of anticipated that because of how young a roster Surrey has.”
The result hasn’t fazed him, nor the team, who’ll believe a season just like the previous one is possible, especially after such an emphatic start to the season.