Brose Bamberg faces a summer break after second defeat against Vechta

Brose Bamberg now has its back against the wall after a second defeat in the playoff quarter-finals against RASTA Vechta, a club that was newly promoted just this season, left it trailing by 1:2 in the best-of-five series. The team of Head Coach Federico Perego was inferior in all respects in its 78:87 loss in the RASTA Dome.

Perego sprang a surprise with his starting five: No Tyrese Rice, Augustine Rubit or Elias Harris – instead Ricky Hickman, Nikos Zisis, Cliff Alexander, Patrick Heckmann and Bryce Taylor began the game for Bamberg. That was an unfortunate decision by Bamberg’s young Head Coach, since they were not able to put up any stiff resistance to Vechta’s energy and fighting spirit. The visitors were already trailing 4:13 when Rice and Harris, who finished the encounter as the two top scorers, came on for the first time. Bamberg promptly produced a 9:2 run to close the deficit to 13:15, but then committed two serious mistakes to allow Vechta to pull 13:23 ahead by the end of the period. Bamberg’s top scorers Augustine Rubit (13 points), Elias Harris (15) and Tyrese Rice (16) tied the scores at 27:27 within the space of three-and-a-half minutes in what was their side’s strongest spell of the encounter, but that was not enough for it to turn the game around: Shortly before the break, RASTA exploited every loss of possession and missed shot by Perego’s players to leave the visitors 39:48 behind at half-time.

Bamberg was completely caught napping at the start of the second half after a lay-up by Heckmann: Two turnovers on the next two attacks and a poor shot on the third enabled Vechta to go down the other end and score quick points three times (41:55). After Perego called a timeout, Elias Harris made two lay-ups, but then nothing clicked again in offense and Vechta pulled away relentlessly to open up a 17-point gap (47:64). The deficit gyrated around the 15-point mark up to midway through the final quarter (66:81) and it was only then that Nikos Zisis woke up, distributing passes to help his side score quick points and cut the gap to 78:85 in the space of three minutes. However, Bamberg was not able to add a single point on its last four attacks.

Federico Perego commented: “Congratulations to Vechta on its deserved win. They forced us into making a lot of mistakes and scored 15 points just from the turnovers they won as a result. We tried to strike back, but they were better than us. I can’t say anything against my players, they gave their all. We’ll recharge our batteries, win game four and be back in Vechta on Thursday.”