Brose Bamberg romps to victory in Braunschweig

Since Head Coach Andrea Trinchieri is only allowed to use six foreign players in the German league, he rested Bryce Taylor for the first time. The team will not only be without Elias Harris for a long time, but also Daniel Hackett for the next three to four weeks, in both cases as a result of injuries. Braunschweig put up tough resistance in the first ten minutes. The home side tried to prevent Trinchieri’s team from finding its rhythm in offense with its extremely hard play. That meant the reigning champs were awarded many free throws – and managed to convert nine out of ten of them commandingly in the opening quarter and take a narrow 17:16 lead at its end. Braunschweig’s intensity then waned noticeably. That spurred on the visitors, who produced a run of six points without reply through Leon Radosevic, Ricky Hickman and Dorell Wright. Bamberg now turned on a magnificent display of aggressive defending. In particular Braunschweig’s top scorer Scott Eatherton, who went into the game as the league’s second-best shooter with an average of 17.9 points per game, was thwarted strongly by Leon Radosevic and Augustine Rubit. Brose was able to keep on stretching its lead up to half-time.

The German champs stuck to its game after the break, too. Its intensity in defense only flagged slightly, while beautiful moves in offense carved out chances for Ricky Hickman, Lucca Staiger and Dorell Wright in particular to score from downtown. The three specialists in that department drained their buckets from outside very reliably: Hickman scored four threes in a game for the first time for Bamberg, while Staiger and Wright drained three of their four shots from downtown to ensure Bamberg finished up with a strong ratio of 12 threes out of 22 attempts. The visitors went into the final period with a 73:49 lead, which Luca Mitrovic and Maodo Lo helped stretch to 92:63.

Andrea Trinchieri commented: “We expected quite a bit from Braunschweig, since it plays solid, effective basketball with an aggressive transition. But we were very focused and allocated the time our players had on court well. We played with a lot of control, everyone fulfilled his task and I was able to keep substituting my players. It’s very tough to play again 48 hours after an away game in the Euroleague, but we were able to do exactly what was necessary to win the encounter securely.”