Mersey Tigers 57 (Bigley 11, Wait 9, Lockett 8)

Newcastle Eagles 100 (Chapman 26, Smith 22, Defoe 13)

Newcastle Eagles defeated Mersey Tigers 100-57 to maintain their BBL Championship title challenge.
Eagles’ victory stretches means they now sit second in the BBL Championship table with 40 points with 10 games left to play. They are level on points with leaders Jelson Homes DMU Leicester Riders but have played a game more. Tigers meanwhile remain bottom, with no wins from 25 games.

Joe Chapman led all scorers for Eagles, finishing with 26 points, in addition to 4 steals. Charles Smith made a double-double of 22 points and 11 rebounds and also had 5 assists. Darius Defoe and Kareem Maddox also had double-doubles. Anthony Martin made 9 assists and finished with 5 steals. For Tigers, their scorers were led by Chris Bigley’s 11 points while Gael Hulsen made 4 steals.

Eagles dominated from the first quarter, where they outscored Tigers 35-10. Joe Chapman scored 15 of the Eagles’ first quarter points, making two threes as he did so.

Tigers managed to put together a good spell at the start of the second quarter, reducing Eagles’ lead to 21 points.

But Eagles then put together some great defence, stopping the Tigers from making a single field goal in a six and a half-minute spell as they went on a 14-2 run, with Chapman’s three at the end of the run putting them up 53-19.

After half-time, Tigers were able to prevent Eagles from pulling much further out in front until a 10-0 run in the final quarter saw Joel Madourie score 6 of the 10 points in the run and extend Eagles’ lead out to 86-38 with 8 minutes to play.

Tigers managed to cut into that lead, reducing it to 40 points late in the game after Osemwegie Semi Eboigbe made a putback following Nathan Schall’s missed freethrow to make it 95-55 but ultimately Tigers were never able to cut into the lead Eagles had built up in the first half.