Vear upset with Saratov loss

Lions’ coach James Vear was clearly disappointed with his side’s performance as they went down 104-77 against Avtodor Saratov on Tuesday

“I want to give a lot of credit to Saratov, I thought they played a great game, they hit a lot of tough shots” he said. “I don’t think we played as well as we could have. Offensively I don’t think we stuck to our game play at times, we got a little stagnant with a lot of one-on-one which kind of played into their hands. So I’m a bit disappointed with the result.”

It was a difficult night for Lions as Saratov – arguably favourites to win the competition – as the visitors poured in 14 three pointers: “We’ll go back to the tape and look at, and see what we learn from that. But Saratov are a very, very good team. They’re in the top three in the Russian BTV League, you don’t get there by fluking it. We have to go back and learn from, we’ll practice harder the guys will learn from this and we’ll be better next time.

“We called time outs when we could to break momentum but confidence breeds confidence. It wasn’t just one or two of them hitting the shots, it was three, four, five of them. They hit some tough shots, they weren’t all open.”

Vear remained positive about Lions’ European experience, which concludes with a home game against Bakken Bears on Wednesday February 9:

“I said this last week, this is huge for British basketball, this is the stage we should be on. It’s been a learning curve both on and off the court for us. It was great to see a big crowd, I love the European night, and I think the players feed off the crowd.”

Lions’ Lithuania forward Aurimas Majauskas admitted that his side struggled to control the Russians’ offence in the first half:

“It was a tough game of course when they ‘re making so many tough shots” he said “I think in the first half they hit 10 of 14 threes and we’d hit two or three, it's difficult to win like that. When they’ve hit something like 70 percent of their threes it’s hard to stay in the game. They’re a good team, of course, we just need to get better. It’s a new coach and  new team, we just have to get better in practice.”

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