Worcester Wolves 91-68 Nottingham Trent Hoods

Sunday 19 February 2023

Worcester Wolves moved up to third position in National Basketball League Division Two after sweeping aside last-placed Nottingham Trent Hoods 91-68 at the University of Worcester Arena on Sunday.

A competitive first half concluded with Wolves 43-35 ahead, but an overpowering third quarter quickly accelerated matters to 74-49, ending the visitors’ resistance.

“After we corrected some things defensively in the second half we did a lot better,” explained Wolves coach Dean Blake.

Ian Vivero-Rodriguez led the scoring with 24 points while four of his teammates also posted double-figure returns.

“The spread of scoring demonstrates the depth we have in the team,” added Blake.

Matei Balteanu had the hot hand early in the afternoon, repeatedly stepping around defenders to accumulate eight points in just the opening three minutes of the afternoon.

The torch was then passed to Vivero-Rodriguez who jumped off the bench with three successive baskets to aid Worcester’s 23-15 first-quarter advantage.

There was no slowdown in the small forward’s output as he dropped a further ten points to maintain his side’s half-time superiority.

Hoods were unable to repel a barrage of three-pointers soon after the interval. Evan Longman connected first, followed by long-range successes for Wilfrid Santhe, Aryan Davoodi and Lucas McGregor and a second from Longman.

Santhe provided a subtle assist to enable a simple layup for Umberto Ferreira and then threw up a clever lob to facilitate a Longman slam.

Little now came back from Nottingham, allowing Wolves to stride to their twelfth victory of the season against five defeats.

This Friday 24 February (7.30pm) the University of Worcester Arena will see Wolves bid to puncture the eighteen-match unbeaten record of table-topping City of Birmingham Rockets.

“Birmingham is sure to be a competitive game from beginning to end and we’ll need to be firing on all cylinders,” said Blake. “Although they beat us in our last matchup it was close for the most part.

“Since then we’ve grown as a team and we’ve demonstrated more resilience because of the way our season has gone.

“If I’m honest I don’t think Birmingham have really been punched yet. We’ve got to do our best to give them a hard punch and see how they respond to that.

“A full house there to see it would be great. Both clubs have aspirations – they’re doing great things in Birmingham and so are we in Worcester.

“It should be a real battle-between-local-rivals atmosphere. I hope they bring a lot of fans with them and we pack out this place. Friday should be amazing.”