The Newcastle Eagles had an excellent 100-89 win in the Vertu Arena on Friday night in the SLB Trophy semi-final first leg against Cheshire Phoenix. They will take that 11-point lead into the Ellesmere Port Sporting Village on Sunday looking to progress to the final in Birmingham in February.

This is a Trophy that Newcastle won last January at the Utilita Arena and are desperate to defend and make another National Championship final. Head Coach Marc Steutel gave his assessment of his team’s performance as he looked forward to that crucial second leg in Cheshire.

“It’s half-time. Whether you’re up down whatever in a regular 40-minute game I’ve been down four/five and you come out and play an incredible last twenty minutes. It’s nice to win the game and it’s important physiologically to win the game.”

“We were strong in areas where we wanted to be strong in on the whole which is positive. The 40-minutes is another challenge for us on Sunday in what will be a really loud environment down there. I’m sure they’ll pack it out with a really loud noise which will make difficult for us to hear each other.”

“But we’re excited. We wanted to be playing these type of games this season. The win is important. Six guys in double figures, 27 assists playing at a good pace. It was a really good performance and we want to make sure we have another one on Sunday.”

For once Steutel had almost a full roster to work with only Josh Ward-Hibbert missing. That depth showed as his bench weighed in with 42 points with Ray’Sean Taylor and Gus Okafor top scoring from it with 16 points each.

“We’ve got a squad that we wanted to compete domestically and in Europe. The European campaign has been a challenge but we’ve played good basketball and developed and got better from it. You can’t get through a season without contributions from everyone.”

“Manny Kanwei with 14 points in only 13 minutes. Little things like that. Gus Okafor who’s been out for a while and we missed him. I love his game he’s so talented and does so many things on the floor and was huge for us in the last quarter.”

“Different games have different match-ups and there’s challenges with that. It’s about the strength of our group and the contributions off the bench. It helps when you bring someone like Ray’Sean off it in a game like this and we continue to build from there.”

Now it’s about assessment and adjustments as the two sides face each other again less than 48 hours after the first clash.

“Both sides have got 24 hours to prepare on Saturday and then in another 24 hours you play the game. Cheshire are going to play the same way. Maybe talk about some tweaks and we’ll do the same. Try to look at some of the possessions we wanted back.”

“there was a few there where I wanted us to be more clinical on the defensive end but they’re a team that puts pressure on the rim and plays at a high pace.”

“We’ve got to reset mentally and make sure we understand that we want to go and win the game in its entirety. That’s the mentality we have to have and let’s see what we can do.”

Tip-off in Cheshire is at 5:30pm with the winners knowing by then who their opponents will be as Bristol Flyers 19-points down from their first leg at London Lions tip-off their second leg two hours earlier.