London Lions will look to take a step towards the BBL Trophy final when they travel to Bristol Flyers for the semi-final first leg on Saturday evening.
The second leg of the semi-final is scheduled at the Copper Box for Wednesday March 9, with the winner on aggregate progressing to the final at Braehead Arena in March.
Coach James Vear admits that two leg basketball isn’t his favourite format of competition:
“I’m not a huge fan of it” he said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, it should be either a one off game or a three game series as many as the league becomes more professional that’s something that will happen.”
Despite the format, Vear won’t be approaching Saturday’s game any differently to normal:
“The big message I’ve been trying to get across is that we take one game at a time” he said. “We play, we learn from it and we move on to the next game. That’s what we have been trying to do this week. We’ve had a full week of practice without any games, so we’ve been able to get on the court and work on things. There’s been no need for walk-throughs and it’s been nice to practice well after what’s been an insane schedule since I took over.”
The BBL Trophy is a knockout competition competed for by the league’s ten sides together with four Division One sides along with a team from each of Scotland and Wales. While Lions were winning 84-70 at Newcastle in the competition’s last 16, Flyers were bringing off arguably the biggest shock of the first round with a 71-68 home victory against Leicester Riders. Both sides were on the road in the quarter-finals with Flyers winning 90-70 at Division One side Derby Trailblazers while Lions won 90-79 at Manchester Giants.
Although the teams have yet to play each other in the league this season, Lions recorded a pair of victories against the West Country team in the BBL Cup group stage. Dirk Williams poured in 21 points as a dominant first half paved the way for a 90-80 Lions’ win at SGS College Arena in early October while Williams was in fine form again a week later as he scored 28 points as Lions came from behind to win 94-85 at the Copper Box.
Having split their eight BBL Cup games, Flyers have made a similar start to the BBL Championship season and sit seventh in the table with a 6-5 record. Malcolm Delpeche leads for scoring for Andre Kapoulas’ team with 16.4ppg, adding 7.1 rebounds and two assists per game. Trejon Jacob pulls down a team-high 8.8 rebounds per game, adding 15.1 points, 3.3 assists and a couple of steals. Point guard Marcus Evans dishes out 6.6 assists per game, along with 15.1 points and 3.9 boards.
Coach Vear knows what to expect from the Flyers:
“They are really well coached and Andreas is someone I respect as a coach. We spent four years together with the national teams, and I was his assistant for two years, I know how hard his teams play and prepare, it will be a real challenge. The one thing they are is probably the most physical team in the league, they play really, really hard and they’ll beat you if you don’t match that. They’ve had some very good results this season, with two wins against Leicester, so we’re expecting a tough game.”
Lions will still be without big man Jordan Williams, while Justin Robinson and Will Neighbour are game-time decisions with ankle and slight concussion injuries respectively.
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