AND ONE!

Weekly round-up for our English-speaking fans by David Hein.

Bamberg give lesson to Skyliners youngsters, ready for Eurocup start

Brose Baskets Bamberg opened 2014 with a convincing 73-43 victory at home over Fraport Skyliners to remain on the heels of Beko BBL leaders Bayern Munich. After a break without international games, Brose will return to European play with their Eurocup opener at French side BCM Gravelines on Wednesday January 8. Bamberg will then finish the first half of the Beko BBL season at MHP Riesen Ludwigsburg on Saturday, January 11.

Before the game against Skyliners on January 5, Bamberg had not played a game since their win at Würzburg on December 26. That gave head coach Chris Fleming plenty of time to work on things during practice with his team.
"We had two weeks of solid practice. And it helped a lot," said Bamberg playmaker Zack Wright.

Bamberg's first game of 2014 was against a short-handed Frankfurt team playing without main stars Andy Rautins and Jacob Burtschi. That left an already young Skyliners team to rely even more on their high-level youngsters. Bamberg didn't let Frankfurt into the game early, jumping ahead 12-2. The lead grew to 16-4 and a three-ball by Elias Harris made it 20-6. After 10 minutes, Brose were leading 21-11. Skyliners gave Bamberg some problems in the second quarter, especially Aziz N'Diaye and Ramon Galloway, who helped cut the Bamberg lead to 25-19. A Casey Jacobsen trey had the cushion back up to 33-21. At the break, the hosts led 33-25. Bamberg picked up the defensive pressure in the third quarter while Jacobsen and Anton Gavel nailed three-pointers to push the lead to 39-27. Brose continued to push and got some easy baskets, including dunks by Wright, Harris and D'Or Fischer and another long ball from Gavel in opening the gap to 50-28. Konstantin Klein knocked down three three-pointers and two free throws in cutting the margin back to 54-39. The lead was 57-39 after 30 minutes. Brose opened the fourth with first five points and after a tip-in by Johannes Voigtmann they went on an 11-0 run for the biggest lead of the game at 32 points. In the end, Bamberg allowed just four points in the fourth quarter while forcing 26 Frankfurt turnovers in the game and collecting 20 assists on offense.

"I think we moved the ball better today compared to previous games. We didn't dribble as much, swung the ball more. We just played team basketball. And we defended well," said Harris, who led Bamberg with 13 points.

Jacobsen and Gavel both had 12 points as Bamberg improved to 13-3 for second place - one game behind Bayern at 14-2. "That was more what we had expected. Everybody sacrificed themselves on defense. Offensively, you could see we're getting better. But we still need to move the ball better. We did that very good in phases," said Fleming.

Bamberg next head on the road to Dunkerque to play French side BCM Gravelines in their first game in Group J of the Eurocup on Wednesday January 8. "We are trying to win as many games as we can and go as far as we can in Eurocup," said Wright. "We haven't had a lot of problems with other teams. Our problems have been us. We just need to figure out what we need to do to finish games strong and stick together." Bamberg associate head coach Arne Woltmann said Gravelines play very quick, which is very typical for French teams. "They have a lot of very good athletes but the team also has very good long distance shooters as opposed to many other teams in France. And they usually live and die by them," said Woltmann.

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