James Vear is looking for his London Lions side to repeat their form from the second half on Wednesday when they host BBL Championship leaders Leicester Riders on Sunday afternoon.
Tip-off is at 4pm and big crowd is expected at the Copper Box. Tickets On Sale Now.
A strong second half saw Lions win 82-75 victory against Bakken Bears and Vear is aiming for a better display than when his side went down 80-67 against the Riders last week.
“Hopefully we’ll score more than four points in the fourth quarter” he said. “We’ll need to play for all four quarters to get a win against Leicester. You can’t switch off, they’re a well-coached and well-drilled team. They all know their roles, they know what works and what doesn’t work. We need to be better for longer than we were last week, but we’ll make adjustments both offensively and defensively. If we can play the kind of defence we did in the second half against Bakken, we’ll be a tough team to play in the BBL.
Leicester will arrive at the Copper Box top of the BBL Championship table, with Friday’s 86-69 victory against Manchester Giants improving their record to a perfect 12-0.
Riders have proved to be Lions' bogey side this season, inflicting four of their six domestic defeats on them. As well as last week's win at the Copper Box, the sides split their pair of BBL Cup group stage games, both of which were played in Leicester, while in the semi-finals of the same competition Riders recorded a pair of tight victories and went on to win the competition by beating Manchester Giants a fortnight ago.
Greg Crandall leads a balanced Riders' offence with 14.5 points per game heading into Friday's match-up with Giants, adding team high 7.5 assists and 2.2 steals.Marc Loving and Patrick Whelen each average 13.6 points, while Darien Nelson-Henry (12.2ppg), Mo Walker (10.5ppg) and Zach Jackson (10.1ppg) also average double figures. Although the opening weeks of his season were blighted by injury, Nelson-Henry leads Riders with 6.1 rebounds while Jubril Adekoya pulls down similar numbers
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