Recap
The Eagles minus injured Chris Linsley were looking to the double over a young Myerscough team who are fighting for a playoff spot…
The game was played in front of another good home crowd as the Eagles in black with Themba Yabantu in their line up took on Myerscough in green looking to consolidate their spot as league leaders….The home team got off to the perfect start as they jumped out offensively on their visitors and by the 5th minute they lead 17-0 with Yabantu and Camargo-Blas doing the damage…The boys in green finally got on the board as Irvine got a score and free throw to make it 17-3…The team in black weren’t in any mood to let Myerscough back into the period as they outscored them 11-8 to close out the quarter 28-11….
The 2nd period was a high scoring affair with both teams struggling to stop each other scoring and it was quite foul ridden as well allowing both teams scores from the free throw line… The Eagles outscored the visitors 10-8 in the early exchanges of the quarter making it 38-19… The latter 5 minutes saw both teams’ trade hoops and with the home side making some good perimeter shots they went into the half time at 52-33 up… (24-22)
The second half saw the team in green edge the first 5 minutes of the 3rd as they slightly closed the gap to 58-42 with baskets from their top scorer Sullivan… The Eagles then went on a mini run of 13-2 with again some good down town shooting to lead 71-44… Myerscough had the final say with a mini run of 0-4 all from the free throw line closing out the period at 71-48… (19-15)
The last quarter was a low scoring affair as the Eagles lost a little focus and the visitors found some shooting range as the edged the last 10 minutes 13-15, with Sullivan hitting 10 of his top scoring 20 points….The game ended with the Eagles taking one more step towards the title with an 84-63 win… (13-15)
Eagles U23 Head Coach Graham Heath said afterwards “We expected a much tougher game against a team chasing a playoff spot… However we came out all guns firing at both ends of the floor and established the tempo early on… This allowed us to build a lead which we didn’t let go…Our focus for almost 40 minutes was good and we demonstrated again some good scoring from across the team… Defensively we did enough holding them to 1 point under our 64 target but we will again need to improve our rotations before this weekend…We now have 4 games to play and it’s all in our hands…”
Eagles Top Scorers- T Yabantu 16, R Camargo-Blas 14, D Karpinskas 13 and T Usher 11…
Eagles U23 v Liverpool at home on Saturday 16th February tip off at 4pm…
