Not the perfect start

Würzburg remains a tough hunting ground for the BBC: After a performance that left a lot of room for improvement, especially in offense, Coburg deservedly lost its season opener in the BARMER ProB South 2nd German Basketball League against TG s.Oliver Würzburg by 69:56 (41:26).

Yet the encounter started promisingly for the visitors, who were without Daniel Krause through a back injury and began with Molosciakas, Dizdarevic, Walde, Wolf and the U.S. center Jason Penn. By midway through the first period, the home side had already committed its fifth team foul and, after gaining possession in his own half, the new BBC captain Yasin Turan gave Coburg its first lead of the game, which the French winger Kevin Franceschi stretched to 11:15 in the 9th minute after a vigorous drive to the board.

Yet the visitors failed to take the wind out of the young home side’s sails early on and increase its foul count by attacking the basket uncompromisingly – instead, slips in concentration crept into their game, which was compounded by dubious decisions. And so the home side sensed it was back in with a chance and ended the first half with a 13:2 run to take a clear 41:26 lead at half-time – and make sure that the players of BBC’s Head Coach Ulf Schabacker were on the end of an earful of hard words.

Yet things did not really improve after the break, as the strong Julian Albus and Dexter Sienko stretched the gap to 20 points for the first-division club’s reserve side (46:26 in the 23rd minute). It was only in the final period that BBC COBURG, whose forward Christopher Wolf sustained a knee injury in an unlucky action to cap a dismal day, reduced the deficit to eight points with nine points in the row by the now wide-alert Dino Dizdarevic, a beautiful carved-out bucket from downtown by Matthias Fichtner and a lay-up by Turan (55:47 in the 33rd minute).