Newcastle Eagles’ new point guard, and Great Britain star, Richard Midgley, is a player that this country has been waiting for according to London United’s Head Coach, and GB Assistant Coach, Tony Garbelotto.
Garbelotto has spent the last three weeks working with Midgley and his GB teammates, and took time out from their preparations for the series of friendlies that the team are embarking upon on the continent to comment on the 6’3″ Maidstone-born player,
“Richard is a sensational player,” said Garbelotto, “I’ve known him for a long time since he was at London with me as a junior.
“We have been waiting for Richard for many years now; he is the point guard that this country has been waiting for. He has great basketball skills, can absolutely shoot the lights out, and more importantly has great court awareness.
“The Eagles have signed themselves an absolutely tremendous player and I think people in the BBL will be extremely surprised by what they see this season.”
Midgley joins the BBL Playoff champions having missed the entirety of last season through injury, after previously signing for Tenerife. He enjoyed a stellar college career and graduated from the University of California in 2006.
The national team is currently in Pau, France, where they face two warm-up games against the Georgian national side. From there they travel to Croatia where Midgley is looking to fire the team to success in a tournament against the hosts (ranked 22nd in the World), New Zealand (ranked 12th in the World), and Finland.
Midlgley, Luol Deng, and GB then return to these shores at the end of next week to face Ireland in back-to-back friendlies at the K2 in Crawley on August 16th and 17th, before the Eurobasket qualification game with Slovakia at Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena on Tuesday 21st August.
Midgley will get his first taste of BBL action when the Eagles host the Guildford Heat on Friday 21st September in a massive curtain-raiser that pits the BBL Championship Playoff winners (Newcastle) against the BBL Championship and BBL Cup winners (Guildford) at the MetroRadio Arena.
