Basketball
9th March
9 March 2008
After finding out that leading scorer Charles Smith may miss the rest of the regular season with an injury, the Newcastle Eagles found the perfect remedy for that and their BBL Trophy Final loss as they bounced back with two wins to strengthen their position at the top of the BBL Championship table.
The Eagles beat their northernmost rivals, the SAMG Verve Scottish Rocks, 79-75 at the MetroRadio Arena on Friday, before winning comfortably 67-88 at basement side Birmingham Panthers the following night. It was a good weekend for their big men as Lynard Stewart scored 20 against the Rocks and Darius Defoe led all scorers with 28 points at the Panthers.
Those wins, combined with back-to-back losses for the Guildford Heat - for only the third time in the league in the last two years - leaves the Eagles with the edge in the BBL Championship title race as they have nine games remaining.
The Heat lost 99-92 to the PAWS London Capital on Saturday, and then went down 105-112 at home to the league's form team, the Worcester Wolves, the following day. For the Wolves, that was their sixth consecutive win and their second of the weekend after beating Everton Tigers by 119-104 the night before their first ever win over the Heat.
Meanwhile, the Kularoos Plymouth Raiders are continuing their title push. The league's sternest defence held the Jelson Homes DMU Leicester Riders to just 4 points in the first quarter as they went on to win 71-107 in the East Midlands to consolidate second place in the table.
The Marshall MK Lions still occupy a top-four spot after condemning the Riders to the first of their defeats this weekend, 88-67 on Friday night, with former Rider Yorick Williams sinking 19 points.
The Lions followed that win by snatching an 88-92 victory at the BiG Storage Cheshire Jets on Sunday. Yorick Williams hit 8 points in a late 11-0 surge, before fouling out of the game, as the Lions led only in the first minute and the last three-minutes of the game.
The fifth-placed Rocks halted a four-game losing streak as Maurice Hampton hit 6/7 three-pointers on his way to 24 points in a 110-63 defeat of the Birmingham Panthers. That was the largest winning margin that a Rocks' side has ever achieved over a Birmingham franchise
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