Brose Bamberg suffers its first defeat in the German league – and deservedly so

Brose Bamberg has stumbled to its first defeat of the season in the easyCredit German Basketball League, losing totally deservedly by 66:92 on the road at Basketball Lions Braunschweig. The team of Head Coach Ainars Bagatskis failed to produce a good performance at any stage of the encounter and in particular did not find an antidote in defense to Braunschweig’s attack. Bamberg has now dropped back to fifth in the table.

There was a small ray of light before the tip-off: Nikos Zisis had recovered and Bryce Taylor was back on the bench after eleven months out through injury, although he did not play. Bagatskis was still without Patrick Heckmann and Arnoldas Kulboka. As so often this season, Brose Bamberg did not get off to a good start in the Volkswagen Hall either and, after trailing 4:10 with three minutes gone, the visitors were almost able to tie the scores thanks to five points from Cliff Alexander and Daniel Schmidt (12:13). After the next bucket from downtown by Maurice Stuckey (15:16), however, Bamberg suffered a blackout in defense, with the result that Braunschweig pulled 17:26 ahead and even opened up a 21:36 gap a short time later. Elias Harris then produced a strong spell to help Bamberg cut the deficit to 34:40. Yet that run by the visitors only served to spur on the Lions, who were now playing as if unleashed and managed to add seven points in the space of 55 seconds to make the score 34:47. The home side went in at half-time 38:52 in front.

Things did not improve for Bamberg after the break, either: The club from Upper Franconia made a tired impression and seemed out of its depth against Braunschweig, who went into the encounter without a win to its name and has only averaged 70 points a game this season. Bamberg trailed by 20 points for the first time (47:67) midway through the third period and it appeared that Bagatskis’ players had already given up the game for lost. After top scorer Stevan Jelovac contributed five of his 14 points in the final quarter, Tyrese Rice added two free throws to make it 66:86 with five minutes remaining – the last points a weak Bamberg team was to score.

Ainars Bagatskis commented: “It’s not easy to find words to describe this game, since everything would sound like an excuse. But there can be no excuse for such a showing. We tried in the past two days to focus on this game. Braunschweig’s a good team, even though its position in the table doesn’t reflect that at the moment. We wanted to play physically, to be aggressive and to score on the platform of a solid defense. We didn’t achieve any of those aims today. Braunschweig is a team of shooters, even though the statistics so far don’t show that. But you mustn’t let them play. They scored 52 points in the first two quarters – that’s far too many. I’ve no explanation for how we defended today. We let them score on one-against-one situations, from pick and rolls and after rebounds, where Braunschweig was better than us on the day.”