Where and when:

Sport Central, 7-30pm Friday 4 March

Summary:

Esh Group Eagles Newcastle face last season’s BBL Play-Off Final opponents London Lions as they aim to bounce back from BBL Trophy Final defeat.

Eagles’ quest for a second consecutive clean sweep came to an end last Saturday as they were beaten by Leicester Riders in front of a sold-out crowd at Emirates Arena in Glasgow.

But if history tells us anything, it is that few teams respond to disappointment like Fab Flournoy’s men.

The reigning champions will seek to maintain the upper hand in the BBL Championship title race against a Lions team, who went without a game last weekend following a big win against Manchester Giants.

Last time they met:

Esh Group Eagles Newcastle 92 London Lions 84 (BBL Championship, Sport Central, 02 October 2015)

Form:

Eagles: WWWWWL
Lions: WWLWLW

Three Points:

* Eagles have won the last seven meetings between these teams
* Rahmon Fletcher went for 21 points and seven assists when these teams met back in October
* Eagles were boosted by the return of Scott Martin and Darius Defoe last weekend

What they say:

Eagles forward Scott Martin: “Our response to the loss will be to get back into the gym and practice hard to correct our mistakes from the weekend. We have to go through the film and see where we can improve and focus on those areas. We can’t dwell on the loss but we need to learn from it.

“For Friday the focus will be on ourselves. The big thing for us is to execute and make some shots. Offensively we need to get ourselves some easy baskets to help our confidence and hopefully that will lead to good things for us.”

Lions coach Nigel Lloyd: “The guys are gelling really well and we have been trying to incorporate some new things because Newcastle have been handling us really well. We are just trying to make little changes.

“Last time they won the Cup, they lost the next game. Now they have lost the Trophy that means they are going to be even more focused. But we are up for the challenge.

“We have got to play our basketball for 40 minutes. We need to learn what we need to do to be successful.

“We are far away from them, sixth place in the league and they are top of the league. But we still want to be able to compete with the top teams in our league and show a little bit of consistency.”