Glasgow Rocks 78 (26,42,66) (Yanders 33, Davis 18, Murray 14)
Newcastle Eagles 91 (21,49,73) (Smith 28, Chapman 21, Sullivan 17)
The Newcastle Eagles rounded off a Championship winning weekend with a 78-91 win over rivals the Glasgow Rocks north of the border.
Charles Smith led the Eagles as he hit 6 three-pointers on his way to 28 points, while Joe Chapman scored 21 and had 7 rebounds. Rob Yanders led the response for the Rocks with 33 points.
The Rocks started quickly with the opening eight points, including four for Yanders and they led 13-4 on Sterling Davis’s three-pointer. Chapman and Smith both connected on triples of their own, before a further six straight points narrowed the gap to 18-16. But the Rocks maintained their lead with a 6-0 run to help the score to 26-21 by the end of the first period.
Joe Chapman single-handedly reversed that situation in the second period. Smith started things off as he scored the opening 5 points of the second to tie the game before a couple of lead changes ensued. Smith and Crowell exchanged triples before, with four minutes left in the half, Chapman took over. He scored 12 straight points in 1.14, including a trio of three-pointers, to make the score 36-45. He would score again, for his sixteenth point of the period, before the Eagles went into the break 42-49 up.
Things didn’t change much as the teams traded blows in the third quarter, with Yanders doing for the Rocks what Chapman had done for the Eagles. The Eagles opened with an 8-0 run as Smith made two more triples in the opening minute and they led 43-57. But Yanders and Gareth Murray shared the points in an 8-0 response for the Rocks soon afterwards, before Yanders would be the only player to score for the hosts in the final 4.47 of the period. He scored 16 points in the quarter as the Rocks recovered to trail just 66-73 going into the decisive period.
But the league champions really turned the screw in the fourth period as they didn’t allow their hosts to score in five minutes, also meaning that Yanders was the only Rock to score in ten minutes of play. During that period the Eagles scored 10 points of their own, including four more for Smith, to settle the game at 66-83. The teams traded baskets down the stretch and the Rocks could get no closer than the final score.
