Basketball Bundesliga: Brose Bamberg loses to Bayreuth

The negative series continues despite a change of coach: Even with the new head coach Oren Amiel, Brose Bamberg still failed in the Basketball Bundesliga and has to accept a narrow 84:87 against the Upper Franconian local rival medi bayreuth. 19 ball losses and a still shaky defense were the main reasons for the third defeat in a row.

Oren Amiel spent four days getting to know his new team before the first competitive game, too little time to instill his offensively fast-paced basketball philosophy in the players. After the few training sessions with the Bamberg team, this did not work out so well: already in the first quarter, Bamberg lost the ball six times on the way forward, Bayreuth used the third ball loss after 90 seconds for an intercepted pass followed by a crashing dunk for 0:4. Except for two free throws, Bamberg did not hit anything in front, seven threes landed next to the basket, 2:13 after six minutes. The spell was broken by playmaker Shannon Scott (13 points), who had only made five shots in four games under Roijakkers: he played as if he was liberated and, after two baskets, also hit the first two three-pointers for Bamberg, almost single-handedly reducing the deficit to 15:20 at the end of the quarter. After Heckmann and Simpson threes, Kenneth Ogbe, who returned from a Corona illness, scored via dunk plus bonus free throw for Bamberg's lead, but the 24:23 was to remain the only one. Although the Bambergers - especially Trevis Simpson with three more threes - were now hitting better from distance, Bayreuth kept coming up with easy points, 40:41 at the break.

After the change of ends, nothing went right for Bamberg offensively for three minutes, the Wagnerstädter advanced to 40:49, could increase to 61:74 until six minutes before the end. Justin Robinson (13 points), top scorer Simpson (21 points) as well as Heckmann (11 points) and Sengfelder (13 points, 14 rebounds) brought Bamberg back to 84:86 with eight seconds left, but the following throw-in resulted in the 19th and final ball loss and Bayreuth deserved to win. Nevertheless, there were positive signs for Bamberg: Scott and Simpson were more accurate than before. And newcomer Akil Mitchell had a good debut (6 points, 10 rebounds) and with five assists for a center also brought an unusually good eye for the teammates.

Oren Amiel (head coach Brose Bamberg): "Bayreuth was better for long stretches of the game. You have to acknowledge that. We are still looking for our way, especially defensively we have a lot of potential for improvement. We now have two weeks to find our style. Offensively it was okay, we scored 84 points. But in the back, we conceded way too easy baskets. That's our job, the job of the whole team, to turn that off and get better. That's what we're going to work on now."

Coach Amiel can now prepare his team for the next task for 14 days: on Dec. 18, 2021, Brose Bamberg has to face the NINERS Chemnitz starting at 8:30 pm.