Wild night in Durham
Durham Wildcats collected their first victory since stepping up to the BBL with a thrilling 74-72 victory against Cheshire Jets, on Saturday.
Having led by 17 points at half-time, the BBL new-boys withheld a furious comeback from the Jets to take their first win at Newton Aycliffe Sports Centre.
Understandably, coach Dave Elderkin (pictured right) was a happy man after the game: “Well obviously it was very welcome win for us. We were six games in with four Trophy games and a Cup match and we’d drawn blanks in all of them.
“I thought we deserved it over the 40 minutes even though they had a good go at us in the second half. It was a good team effort, and I thought the second quarter was the best we’d played this season as we held them to five points. At half-time we talked about not being complacent, but we came out and played complacently with soft defence and slow offence and we let them make a real game of it.”
It was a good week to be a basketball fan in the north east as Newcastle Eagles continued their good start to the season with a 100-88 victory against Prestige Homes MK Lions, despite a strong third period from the visitors. There was better news for the Lions on Sunday as they defeated visitors Guildford Heat 98-82 for their first Championship win of the campaign.
The misery continued for the Heat this week, as that loss at MK was their second defeat of the weekend having gone down 79-77 at home against Jelson Homes DMU Leicester Riders on Saturday evening and they have now lost ten straight games in all competitions.
Jets did collect one win over the weekend as they bounced back with an 85-78 victory against Glasgow Rocks to join the Scottish team in third place in the table. They had to hold off the Rocks in a pulsating fourth period comeback, but an 18 point, 15 rebound double-double from Matt Schneck proved to be the difference between the sides.
Finally, UCP Marjon Plymouth Raiders ended One Health Sharks Sheffield’s domination of the BBL Cup as they became the first side to qualify for the semi-finals. Paul Williams (pictured left) returned to haunt his former team as he finished with a 17 point, 13 rebound double-double and the game winning basket to put Raiders into the last four where they will meet the winner of this week’s clash between Mersey Tigers and Worcester Wolves.
