medi Bayreuth loses 75:83 at Bremerhaven Polar Bears

medi Bayreuth has embarked on the final phase of the season after the ALLSTAR break with an extremely bitter defeat. On the 26th game day of the easyCredit German Basketball League, the team of Head Coach Raoul Korner suffered a 75:83 (40:36) defeat at the hands of the Polar Bears in Bremerhaven’s Stadthalle on Saturday evening and so will probably have to bury all its dreams of participating in the playoffs again.

Yet the HEROES OF TOMORROW began with a lot of verve and good team basketball. In front of a crowd of 2,169 spectators, they initially managed to carve out and capitalize uncompromisingly on good opportunities to score, opening up a 15-point gap before the encounter’s momentum started to shift at the beginning of the second period.

medi was always able to retain the lead up to the break, but the home side gradually got more and more into the game.

medi Bayreuth began its game on the road at Bremerhaven Polar Bears with its expected starting five. The HEROES OF TOMORROW dominated the opening spell, repeatedly channeling the ball successfully to players near to the basket and notching up a high shooting percentage. And since they did not concede any turnovers and drained their threes reliably, the players of Head Coach Raoul Korner quickly built a double-digit lead. In contrast, not much came off for Bremerhaven and so medi was able to take the first quarter by the clear margin of 26:14.

The lead of the HEROES OF TOMORROW mostly gyrated around the ten-point margin up to midway through the second period. Their play in attack lost some of its penetration, since the club from the city by the North Sea managed better to thwart the visitors’ moves below the basket. At the other end, however, the Polar Bears were not able to reduce their deficit by any decisive margin since they kept on conceding turnovers, some of them through shocking mistakes. It was only toward the end of the first half that the lead narrowed. medi hardly managed any stops in defense and was not able to maintain the sharpness in attack it displayed in the first period. A beautiful assist from Kyan Anderson to Andreas Seiferth at least secured it a 40:36 lead at half-time.

Shortly after the break, the Polar Bears then went ahead for the first time since leading 3:2 at the beginning. Kassius Robertson was able to hit back right away with a bucket from downtown, but medi was no longer able to pull away from Bremerhaven. The home side was not to be shaken off and was 60:59 in front at the end of the third period. The game by then was not top-class, but it was certainly exciting.

In the final period, the Polar Bears fought with courage born of desperation to capture two key points in the battle to avoid relegation. As a result, they scored despite good defending or snapped up offensive rebounds and so a second chance to add points. And Bayreuth failed almost completely to make shots like that in the second half. In particular, its 3-point field goal percentage dropped sharply, with the result that the club from Northern Germany increasingly gained the upper hand and finally ran out winners by 83:75.

source: https://www.medi-bayreuth.de