Heavyweights return as Eagles look to dominate
BBL Championship Playoff Quarter Finals
Friday 27th April & Sunday 29th April 2012
Newcastle Eagles v Guildford Heat
It’s back to serious business for Newcastle Eagles on Friday as they start their push for the fourth piece of BBL silverware this season.
The BBL Champions enter the game on an unprecedented run of four straight defeats mainly due to player/coach Fab Flournoy resting key men for the playoffs. Charles Smith, Joe Chapman and Andy Thomson have all ended the regular season with three evenings rest and they were joined on the sidelines by point guard Paul Gause in Sunday’s heavy defeat at this weekend’s opponents Guildford Heat.
The Heat have been hit and miss this season and their final report card reads ‘could have done better’. That said, they have grown stronger as the season progressed and former Eagle Drew Lasker is one of several men who could do damage to Newcastle’s dreams of a clean sweep. Whilst the Eagles won’t be taking their opponents lightly, confidence is high in the Newcastle camp.
Joe Chapman this week collected the Eagles Player’s Player of the Season award and he was quick to make it clear that this year’s work was far from done. “We’ve been working hard in training and we are all ready to perform. We took advantage of the rest for the end of season games to work on our defense. We never worry about our offense as we’re confident that will look after itself with the talent we have on the roster. Defense wins games and importantly Championships, so that’s what we’ve been focusing on and the rest will give us an advantage on defense going into the playoffs.”
There have been a few worries from fans that there may be lingering injuries amongst the Eagles star men that may jeopardize their team’s hopes of completing their second clean sweep. Something that Joe was keen to dispel, “It’s been wonderful resting our bodies these last few games. Prior to that I’d personally played the most minutes in the League and a lot of the other guys had put in some big minutes too as we run a pretty small roster so it was good for all of us to rest up and re-juice the batteries. Guys were just dealing with the long season with a lot of games including those extra ones in Holland so it was just a few aches and pains really. Everyone now is fully fit and excited for Friday!”
Newcastle have forgone their hard earned home court advantage to stick with their usual Friday night game at Sport Central before heading down to Surrey Sports Park on Sunday. The two-legged playoff game is an anathema to the sport of basketball so unfortunately unless we get a blowout win for either team on Friday night the crowd at Sport Central will be left wanting more.
Eagles fans will be hoping their team can immediate jump back to the performance level they achieved prior to lifting the BBL crown. We’ll find out this and plenty more as the BBL playoffs start this weekend!
Follow Darrin Smith on Twitter @OleDJ
