Beware of Greeks bearing gifts the saying goes. But in a month renowned for present giving, the team from Thessaloniki were in no mood to hand out such favours to their hosts. Iraklis taking a well-deserved 108-80 road victory over the Eagles to retain their 100% ENBL record moving to 4 wins.

It also meant that last year’s beaten finalists are still searching for that elusive first win in this year’s competition as they fell to a third defeat in three games with Iraklis completing a quickfire double over Newcastle following their 85-71 home win on November 5^th.

Eagles were without influential forward Gus Okafor who injured, joined longer term absentees Marco Anthony and Josh Ward-Hibbert on the bench. Once again Malcolm Smith also being unavailable to take up Head Coach Marc Steutel’s call.

The Eagles did have a new face on their roster and bench in the form of British guard Max Matthews who was promoted from their ‘feeder’ team at Newcastle University to try and help the cause. In the end though the short-handed roster was simply not enough to stop the dominant Greeks.

The foundations of Iraklis’ excellent road victory were built on a highly impressive first quarter. A ten-minute period that gave Newcastle a mountain to climb that they could never scale. Justin Wright-Foreman had burned the Eagles for 32-points in the first game in November and he was at it again.

Quickly into his stride and helped by great point guard play by Greek International and Iraklis captain Dimitrios Moraitis and powerful support from forwards DJ Funderburk and Sean Smith they saw the visitors off to a strong start.

After Deion Hammond’s driving lay-up got the scoreboard off and running Iraklis countered with 12-straight unanswered points and although Cole Long brought Newcastle back to a single-figure deficit the Greeks were looking dominant.

Establishing a double-digit advantage again and then scoring the last eight points of the first period to take a 30-10 lead after ten minutes. On offence they were fluent. Man, and ball moving well to create scoring opportunities which they executed well and on defence they were very miserly indeed.

Newcastle fared better in the second quarter. Although Iraklis showed their depth of roster when Kyle Foster and Nikos Tsiakmas came off the bench and nailed their first shots. Both triples. Eagles though showed character and a 8-0 run with triples from Maceo Jack and Hammond cut the gap to 13-points.

But the visitors always had an answer and scored the last seven points of the half to tie the quarter at 25-points each and take a 20-point advantage at 55-35 into the locker rooms at half-time.

Could Eagles come back? Ray’Sean Taylor did his best to keep them in the contest scoring well but even when he tripled it only kept the Eagles within twenty. Iraklis once again showing the value of finishing the quarter well with the final eight points to take a huge 85-57 lead into the last period.

Steutel gave Matthews his first minutes as the final quarter started and he responded with a bucket. Sauver Kande also gave Newcastle a positive vibe with four from six from downtown whilst Taylor continued to increase his stature and points tally. Eagles tying those last ten minutes 23-23.

But the final gap and score was a true reflection of the game. Iraklis played great team basketball and executed well at both ends showing the power of the Greek domestic league. For Newcastle they battled gamely but short-handed it was always tough going against such top-class opposition.