Sunday 31 March 2013 Glasgow Rocks 89-68 Worcester Wolves

Worcester Wolves had to settle for one win from two matches at the weekend. The Wolves came into the games in a four-way battle with Glasgow Rocks, Plymouth Raiders and Surrey Heat for third to sixth places in the British Basketball League. After a comfortable 89-69 victory over Plymouth, the Wolves found themselves on the wrong end of an almost identical score-line when they were beaten 88-69 at Glasgow on Sunday.

Heading into the final week of the regular season the best placing that Wolves can now achieve will be fifth, with the distinct possibility that they could meet the Rocks again in the first round of the playoffs. Worcester pulled back an early deficit and edged ahead in the first half. However a lean spell for the Wolves towards the end of the third quarter re-created a double-digit Rocks’ advantage which their visitors were unable to recover from.

Three-point attempts from Worcester guards Alex Owumi and Sherrad Prezzie-Blue both went awry before forward Arnas Kazlauskas made his. In the meantime the Rocks steadily converted their opportunities to take an 18-8 lead after five minutes had elapsed. Rocks’ centre Jamie Vanderbeken hit a couple of baskets, and then watched his Wolves’ counterpart Arturas Masiulis do the same to move matters to 23-12. Five points for Owumi amongst a 10-4 run to end the first quarter saw the arrears reduced to 27-22.

Owumi was again on target to begin the second period and laid on a neat pass for Kai Williams to float home a three. After Stan Ocitti blocked a shot attempt by Rocks’ Scottish International forward Gareth Murray, Owumi was on hand to hit from distance and Wolves were in front for the first time, at 29-30. Tit-for-tat scoring ensued for the remainder of the first half, by which time Owumi had already accumulated a sizeable 19 points, including four three-pointers.

Coming out of the locker rooms the teams were locked at 45-45. Five points from Glasgow player-coach Sterling Davis and two points from veteran guard EJ Harrison pushed their side clear again, before Wolves once more responded. With three minutes of the third quarter to go a Prezzie-Blue triple helped his team to claw back to 59-57. But a solitary free throw from Kazlauskas was the only further movement in the quarter on the Worcester side of the scoreboard, while Glasgow had no difficulty in their own scoring output, developing a ten-point cushion at 68-58.

A trio of baskets from Owumi and one from Masiulis to open the final period were enough to prompt Davis to call a steadying time-out with his side ahead at 71-66 with seven minutes to play. When the action re-started, Murray nailed a quick three and his team mate Brice Fantazia stole the ball from Masiulis and laid it home, forcing Wolves’ coach Paul James to take his turn in requesting a break with his side trailing 76-66.
For the remaining six minutes of the afternoon the Wolves offence dried up, with just three more points scored, all from the foul line. By contrast the hosts once more made hay at the offensive end to rack up twelve further points, with eight of those coming from their Canadian forward Andrew Wedemire, sealing a comfortable margin of victory.

Paul James was disappointed that his team were unable to build on the good performance against Plymouth, saying: “We performed really well on Friday against Plymouth, but have now faltered here against Glasgow. I’m pleased that we gave as good as we got to get back into this game, and take the lead. But then we didn’t capitalise. There were too many misplaced passes and we failed to get back on defence.”

Despite the defeat, James is confident that his team has what it takes to finish off the season in the right frame of mind for the playoffs, adding: “It looks like we could end up playing either Surrey or Glasgow. We’ll get back to preparing for this weekend’s games against Leicester and Plymouth, and if we play to our abilities then we’ll be where we should be, ready for the playoffs.”

For the fourth successive game Owumi led the Worcester scorers, hitting 28 points. Masiulis and Ocitti were the only other double-figure Wolves’ scorers with 13 and 10 points respectively. Davis led the Glasgow scorers with 17 points, supported by 15 points from Wedemire.

Wolves will round off their regular season with matches on consecutive days next weekend. On Friday newly-crowned BBL Champions the Leicester Riders will visit the University of Worcester (tip off 7.30pm). Wolves will then make a trip down to Devon to face the Plymouth Raiders on Saturday evening.