| Glasgow Rocks | 86 |
| Guildford Heat | 75 |
Tigers travelled to Glasgow on Sunday, and Rocks snapped an 11 game losing streak as they won 81- 71. The home team were led by the British pair of Gareth Murray, who had 25 points, and Chi Lewis- Parry, who added 17. Marcus Bailey (25) and Andre Smith (24) were the only two in double figures for the Tigers.
Rocks had already qualified for the post-season despite a 66-62 loss at Sheffield Sharks, and coach Sterling Davis was relatively pleased with their weekend's work:
"It was a mixed weekend. Looking at the Sheffield game, I thought we played hard and well, and they did the same thing. We managed to stay consistent throughout the game. We made runs and they countered. If could have gone either way, but once again they pulled it out at the end. There were a lot of pluses, but unfortunately we didn't quite the win.
"I thought we played well as a team against Tigers, and most importantly we fought for the whole time. It was good to get the win against the side that we're facing in the play-offs. That will give us confidence and ensure we go into the play-offs with the right mindset. It was great to break the losing run. It's a new season now, and regardless of who's playing who, it's all up in the air. We have as good a chance as anyone."
Player-coach Davis had to again sit out the action due to a foot injury, and he is far from confident that he will return for Friday night's play-off game:
"It'll be a game- time decision, but as of right now, I'm not playing. I'm due to see another specialist this week, and if it's possible I'll be out there playing."
Tigers go into the game having lost at Guildford last Wednesday before winning against BiG Cheshire Jets on Friday. Everton coach Tony Garbelotto was disappointed with his side's results:
"We said we wanted to push forward and win games. But that isn't the easiest thing to do when there's nothing to play for. We didn't play well in Guildford, but there were really good in the second half. We controlled the game against Jets for 98.5 percent of the time, but went to sleep for a couple of minutes, and let them back into the game. I'm sure even Cheshire would agree that we were always in control, though.
"On Sunday we had real injury issues, and before we knew it we were down to six men. Even my energizer bunnies such as Olu [Babalola] couldn't handle the pressure in the second half, and they just blitzed us. With the personnel we had, we just didn't have a plan B or enough in the tank. We knew by half-time that we'd be playing them in the play-offs, and without any disrespect to them, that's the matchup we wanted. But we didn't want to give them the boost of winning that game."
Garbelotto knows what his side have to do if they are going to progress to their first Finals Weekend:
"We need to be fully fit and firing on all cylinders. If we can do that, we'll win the game, but that's not guaranteed. It's been frustrating that our schedule has meant that we haven't been able to practice and improve thing over the last two or three weeks. We've been playing games, resting and doing the occasional walkthrough.
"We played really well against them this season until Sunday's game when, ironically they had their weakest team on the floor. We have to contain Rob Yanders as he's still one of the premier players in the BBL. We need to do a better job on Gareth Murray than we did this week. We had curtailed him in the three previous games and managed to get him frustrated. We also need to do a better job curtailing the energy that Randy George, Chi Lewis-Parry and Wilbur Johnson bring to the game. I fully expect us to do that, and would be very disappointed if we didn't win the game."
While Rocks collected the victory last weekend, Tigers won the other two meetings between the teams in the BBL Championship and also knocked them out of the BBL Cup at the first round stage with an 88-69 away victory. Tigers hosted Davis' team in mid-December, and recorded an 86-76 victory before wrapping up the season series with an 85-73 win at Kelvin Hall last month.
Posted on 22 April, 2009
