AND ONE!

Weekly roundup for our English-speaking fans by David Hein.

Week 8 - November 12th 2013

 

Bamberg drop important Euroleague home game, win close one in BBL

Brose Baskets Bamberg were hoping to secure an important victory over EA7 Emporio Armani Milan in the Turkish Airlines Euroleague. But things don’t always turn out how you want, and Bamberg suffered a 76-62 loss at home against Milan to drop to 2-2 in Group B. Brose did bounce back in the Beko BBL in holding on for a 79-77 victory at home against New Yorker Phantoms Braunschweig.

Bamberg will look to re-focus for the up-coming week with two tough road games, playing on Thursday November 14 at Zalgiris Kaunas and then travelling in the Beko BBL to play at Telekom Baskets Bonn on Sunday November 17.

“This week – against Milan and Braunschweig – was not our best basketball. We’re hoping that we can put it behind us and look forward to what could be one of our biggest games of the year in the Euroleague to see if we can get a road win,” said Bamberg captain Casey Jacobsen.

Bamberg dropped to 2-2 in the Euroleague, the same record as Milan and one game better than 1-3 Kaunas as the trio looks like it might fight it out for the third and fourth spots in the group.

Against Milan, Bamberg fell behind 6-0 early but answered with a 12-0 run for a 12-6 lead. Chris Fleming’s men could not keep up the good start and trailed 20-18 after one quarter.

Jamar Smith temporarily gave Bamberg the lead but Milan used a 10-2 spurt for a 32-25 lead. The hosts got it back to 32-30 but Milan answered right back to go ahead 39-31 and led 43-33 at the intermission.

Milan increased their advantage to 47-35 and were still up 53-44 when Bamberg began to fight back. They got the deficit down to 56-51 after three quarters.

The margin was just 56-54 early in the fourth quarter but Bamberg missed two chances to tie the game. And their offense had lost all rhythm, watching Milan score seven straight points for a 63-54 deficit. That was the back-breaker as Bamberg could not get closer than seven points the rest of the way.

Zack Wright led Bamberg with 13 points while Damir Markota scored 10 points and Sharrord Ford collected nine points and 12 rebounds.

“Unfortunately we were out of sync offensively. I think Milan was just better than us today,” said Fleming, who said the difference maker was Milan’s Alessandro Gentile, who collected 18 points, three rebounds, six assists and two blocks.

“We had a lot of trouble with Gentile. He was the guy that decided the game. We never found a source where we could generate some offense. Unfortunately that cost us the win.“

Bamberg struggled from the field, hitting just 39 percent from inside the arc and just 24 percent from long range.

“It’s hard to win with a shooting percentage like that,” said the coach.

“We had a good run and cut the lead down. I don’t know if we ran out of energy or what, but they started to make shots and we couldn’t make shots and we couldn’t get any stops,” added Wright.

Brose bounced back at home four days later as they held off Braunschweig 79-77 to improve to 6-2 in the Beko BBL with their fourth straight win.

“In the end, it counts as a win. And in a couple of months no one will remember how we won as long as we won,” Jacobsen summed up the game.

Maik Zirbes and Gavel led the team with 15 points each while Wright had 10 points and four more players tallied at least eight points. With Braunschweig playing a zone defense, Bamberg struggled with their three-point shooting, making just 7-of-28 (25 percent).

“It was a tough game. We haven’t seen a team that played so much zone against us. We had a hard time but in the end we got it done,” said Gavel, who knocked down just three of 10 triple attempts.

“We lost a little bit of confidence with the zone defense early on. But the guys fought pretty hard. It was a difficult situation but we fought our way through it and got it done,” added Fleming.

Bamberg opened the game well and led 11-5 and it was still a 16-10 advantage midway through the first quarter. But Braunschweig scored the next eight points to lead 18-16 after one quarter.

The guests extended the run to 13-0 for a 23-16 lead. Bamberg punched right back with a 9-0 surge to reclaim the advantage. Braunschweig again forged ahead by six points before Smith’s triple late in the second quarter cut the deficit to 35-32 at the break.

Bamberg never really could find an answer in the third quarter and the game was knotted 60-60 after 30 minutes.

Braunschweig were up 65-62 when Bamberg went on an 11-0 run for a 73-65 lead. Once again, Bamberg could not hold Braunschweig down and James Florence hit two free throws to even the game at 77-77 with 15 seconds left. After Wright split two free throws with 13 seconds to play, Florence had a good look with a three-pointer with 2.7 seconds left but missed. Karsten Tadda grabbed the rebound and was fouled with 0.2 seconds remaining and provided the final scoreline.

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