The Newcastle Eagles begin their third campaign in Europe with Tuesday night’s home opener in their 2025/26 European North Basketball League group game. Their opponents are Dziki Warszawa of Poland’s top professional basketball league.

In their first two seasons of ENBL competition Newcastle have given an excellent account of themselves and done British Basketball proud as they finally realised a long time ambition of competing in European basketball.

Their debut season in 2023/24 saw them reach the quarter-final stage where the lost narrowly over two legs to eventual winners Bakken Bears. Last season the Eagles reversed that scenario and went on to make the Final Four in Bratislava.

There they faced ironically Tuesday night’s opponents Dziki defeating them 80 – 67 to move on to the Championship game against CSO Voluntari of Romania which they lost 95 – 82 to make them runners-up after a great campaign.

Will they go that one step further in 2025/26? That remains to be seen but they’ll certainly give it their all and are a team everyone will respect after their first two seasons in the competition.

That win in the semi-final against Dziki was the second time the two sides ad met in last years campaign. The Eagles also winning the group game in Poland 79 – 70 meaning the Polish side come to Newcastle looking for revenge and to make it third time lucky.

After a tough weekend with two losses on the road at Leicester and Cheshire, Head Coach Marc Steutel in previewing the game was in no doubt that his players and he are looking forward to the occasion.

“Obviously excited to play against Dziki. Third time in quick succession of seeing them. They’re from a well-respected Polish League and they had a competitive game against Riga to start the ENBL.”

“We know they’re going to pose a threat. Picking up (Dontay) Caruthers from Inter Bratislava last year shows they’re going to be a challenge. But yes, we’re excited to be starting the ENBL.”

“It’s our third game in five days which is a big challenge for us. That’s something that we have to try and figure out but I know the group are really excited to start European competition and see where we can go from there.”

“Hopefully we can build our own European journey. It’s going to be difficult with the group that we’ve been drawn in and playing one of the better teams at home for the first game. But the group’s excited, prepared and ready to go.”

Steutel mentioned Dontay Caruthers a high-quality point guard who led the ENBL in assists last season at Bratislava and is very much Dziki’s floor general.

He also mentioned that Dziki have started their ENBL campaign already this season against Riga Zelli. What he didn’t mention was Dziki lost that game very narrowly at home 93 – 91.

Top performers on the night for Warszawa being Americans Landrius Horton with a massive 35-points and Bennett Vander Plas with 17 points and 6 rebounds.

Both players along with Caruthers that Eagles will mark down as dangers as they open their campaign in The Vertu Arena on tonight with a 7:30pm tip-off.