Worcester Wolves Cubs in West Midlands Minis Tournament Report

Worcester Wolves Cubs competed in the West Midlands minis Tournament on Saturday against nine other regional teams and arguably found themselves in the toughest opening round of pool games. Wolves got off to a flying start against Coventry Tornadoes with a score from Francesco Mai taking the ball from the tip off and threading his way to the basket to convert the lay up. Wolves went on to score six unanswered points disrupting the Tornadoes offence and the game was moving their way at half time with the score at 10-6. Coventry bounced back in the second half with a gutsy performance, both teams trading buckets and a superb long range effort from Wolves Kieran Phelps balanced the score at 14 – 14 with under a minute to go. Coventry scored from an inbounded ball and pulled down a crucial rebound to convert a transition play narrowly defeating the cubs by 18 points to 14.

In the second game of the day the Wolves were up against the junior section of Redditch basketball, a younger side than Wolves they were always going to be up against it and so it proved with every Wolves player finding themselves on the score sheet. Redditch put up a strong fight but found it hard to break through a well organised Wolves defence, and great work from Maggie Marshall and Alice Hartley forced a number of turnovers with both players duly converting at the other end of the floor and the Wolves Cubs running out eventual 30-0 winners

Game 3 was a thrilling encounter with City of Birmingham, defending champions and this year’s favourites to take the title. Wolves buckled down on defence to contain a very quick and well organised Birmingham team, they were run close and Wolves led for much of the first half going into the half time break with a four point advantage. In the second half Wolves kept up their defensive intensity with Ruth Walker and Maggie Marshall matching up well to their big forward players but some very sharp long range shooting from Birmingham saw them get their noses in front and eventually take the win 21-17

In the final game of the day Wolves took on Wolverhampton SLAM in the 5^th place play off, Slam were short handed for this game with only five players available, nevertheless they put up a very strong performance and contained wolves to only 4 points in the first half. Wolves Pushed on in the second half but found it tough going against the bigger players from Wolverhampton, eventually finding some rhythm in the closing minutes of the game and three quick scores saw them close out the win 10-4 to take a very creditable 5^th place overall.