The Newcastle Eagles Women’s Super League Basketball team travelled up to East Kilbride in Scotland for their first competitive game of the season. Their opponents were the highly touted Caledonia Gladiators many pundits tip for honours and silverware this season.

On the evidence of this first game both teams will need to improve if they have aspirations to be in the shake-up at the end of the campaign. Caledonia did win every quarter and will take heart in their 16-point win but in truth they were helped by the Eagles poor shooting in all phases of the game.

For Newcastle many of their roster need to find their feet in this League and perhaps the Betty Cordona Trophy is a good way to do that. They certainly didn’t lack any intensity nor effort. They won the rebound battle and forced their opponents into twenty turnovers.

The issue though was that they just couldn’t capitalise on those two aspects to take the chances they afforded them and in the end their profligacy on the offensive end was the difference that meant they couldn’t get close enough to their opponents.

The Eagles started with four of their returnees from last season, new Captain Chloe Gaynor, Abby Lowe, Lauren Saiki and Tierra Hodges who were joined in the starting five by new USA import Jada Guinn.

Newcastle opened brightly in the first quarter with Lowe and Hodges in particular showing intensity and commitment and pulling down early offensive boards. It forced Caledonia into early foul trouble and allowed the Eagles to compete really well in the first ten-minute stretch.

With good defence thrown in they held their hosts to a tight opening quarter as the lead swayed back and forward in the early exchanges. Lowe and Hodges complementing their rebounding by also leading their team in scoring. Saiki as usual was pulling the strings and keeping her side in the game.

Unfortunately, the free-throws that Newcastle earned were not accepted with the regularity they would have liked especially in the second quarter. Missing ten of twenty trips to the line combined with no three-point efforts in the first half didn’t help their cause despite them winning the battle of the boards.

After sneaking the first quarter by a single point 15 – 14, Gladiators looked more settled in the second period and took it by 20 – 14 to establish a seven-point advantage as the teams headed for the locker rooms to talk the first twenty minutes over.

Hodges already had a double-double at the half and went on to show how much Head Coach Matt Newby was pleased to get her back in black and white. However apart from Lowe, eight of who’s ten points came from the line, she didn’t have the support that she required.

After the first twenty minutes Newcastle would have hoped to fire up in the second half. It wasn’t to be although Gladiators never ran completely away from them. The home side did get in front by 25 at one stage but Newby’s Eagles kept plugging away and never stopped battling.

The third quarter was conceded by another seven points and with the Eagles offence misfiring badly that 14-point deficit was always going to be nigh on impossible to cut back in the final period and so it proved. Caledonia even edging the final period 14 – 12.

So, an opening game defeat. But a defeat that could easily have been closer had the Eagles netted even an average percentage of shots. Put simply 26%, including 0/10 three-point efforts, from the field and 50% from the charity stripe is simply not going to get it done.