THANKS to two really impressive team performances last weekend, we can now start planning for the play-offs.
The guys played really well both offensively and defensively at Milton Keynes on Friday evening. They held Demarius Bolds, their top scorer and an outstanding finisher, to 15 points and in the end they ran out fairly comfortable winners – meaning that a win against the Glasgow Rocks at the Northgate would ensure that they would make it to the post-season tourney.
Once again they put on a convincing performance, with Colin O’Reilly maintaining his excellent shooting record with a 31-point haul including seven from behind the arc. Bill Cole was truly outstanding in rebounding and blocking shots to the point where I had the luxury of being able to give the bench players a run in the last three minutes.
A special mention to Matt Schneck who played 30 minutes despite a bout of food poisoning! He might have looked a pale imitation of himself, but he still managed to make a significant contribution.
So we go into the final weekend of the regular season with two games to play. We have to travel to the north east to play champions Newcastle Eagles on Friday but we cannot rely on them sitting back on their laurels as they seemed to in their loss to Mersey Tigers last weekend. We have matched up with them pretty well so far this season, and we could do with the points in order to finish up as high as possible so we will treating this game as seriously as we have done every other one in the season.
We have momentum with four wins and a narrow loss in our last five matches, and it would be good to carry that into the play-offs.Then we meet Sheffield Sharks at the Northgate on Sunday. They’ve not been the force we have come to expect this season but they are still tough.
But if we beat them and other results go our way, we could replace them in sixth and hold the head-to-head over all the teams from fifth to eighth!
As I write the only play-off seedings that are fixed are the Eagles at number one and the Glasgow Rocks at number five so there is no way that we can even hazard a guess at our opponents. What we are certain of is that we will prepare thoroughly for the game whoever it happens to be and let them worry about us, as we seem to be running into a rich vein of form at just the right time!