medi Bayreuth loses 75:78 at home to BG Göttingen

medi Bayreuth began its home encounter against BG Göttingen with the same starting five as in its past games. The nervousness in Bayreuth’s play after its previous defeats was pretty visible. and the visitors capitalized on that to take a small lead for the first time. Yet the HEROES OF TOMORROW gradually fought their way into the game and even snatched a 20:19 lead at the end of the first period thanks to a bucket from beyond the arc by Kyan Anderson.

However, the opening attack of the second quarter saw the lead change hands immediately, as Mihajlo Andric buried his shot from downtown. And the club from Lower Saxony held onto that advantage for the whole period. Michael Stockton skilfully called the shots and repeatedly got into a position to finish moves, too. medi continued to fight tenaciously, although it never seemed able to get into a smooth stride. Although the deficit never grew to threatening proportions, neither did Bayreuth manage to take the lead itself. It was only toward the end of the first half that the gap grew larger, as medi conceded a number of turnovers to allow the visitors to pull away a little. The teams went in at half-time with the score at 35:42.

The HEROES OF TOMORROW then dominated the opening spell of the second half, as De’Mon Brooks drained a three and Hassan Martin added two buckets to tie the scores after two minutes. They even had the chance to go ahead in this spell, but once more it was a turnover that got Göttingen back into the encounter. As a result, the visitors were able to stretch their lead to 63:55 and keep medi at arm’s length. Two buckets by Andreas Seiferth made it 57:63 at the end of the quarter and everything was up for grabs again.

The HEROES OF TOMORROW refused to give up in the final ten minutes. Although the visitors got off to a good start in the last period with a bucket from outside by Pendarvis Williams, the team of Head Coach Raoul Korner was then able to whittle away at the deficit. A run of seven points without reply, which was finished by a three from Kassius Robertson, put medi 72:71 in front with just under four minutes remaining. And it then had several chances to stretch its lead. However, four turnovers in quick succession were finally too much and Göttingen scored on two of the attacks to turn the game around decisively. A last three by Adonis Thomas was no longer enough, since Michael Stockton added a lay-up at the other end and the shot from beyond the arc by Kassius Robertson to send the game into overtime rebounded off the hoop. As a result, BG Göttingen ran out winners by 78:75.

Raoul Korner commented: “Congratulations to Johan and his team on the victory. You can see that we’re completely lacking any confidence. Of the 32 three-pointers we took, Göttingen only defended really hard against one. Yet they still didn’t drop. In the end, we then somehow gained the momentum by fighting our way into the game and went one point in front. But then we conceded five steals in a row.

You can literally feel how tensed up we are and at the end of the day we fall victim to that. Maybe it will help us that we can now bury any bothersome thoughts of reaching the playoffs. Basically, we now need to loosen our tenseness and dig our way out of our hole. We certainly don’t intend to give the other sides any gifts in what’s left of the season and if at the end we reach the playoffs, then we’ll naturally be over the moon. However, we’re all aware that we have completely different worries than that subject at the moment. I think you saw today that we function well as a team and fight, but we’re simply not playing well and we don’t have any consistency at the moment. It’s always a bit of a surprise to see who plays well on the day. This time it was Adonis who sustained us over large spells. At the end, we had a line-up on court that turned the game around completely, only to throw it away again. At the moment it’s extremely difficult for us to find a rhythm we can stick to. There are now eight games left and it’s more a question of pride than one of reaching the playoffs.”

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