s.Oliver Würzburg faces neighborhood showdown at FRAPORT SKYLINERS on the 24th game day

The cycle of midweek and weekend games continues: s.Oliver Würzburg faces two away games in Frankfurt and Denmark before ALLSTAR DAY in the easyCredit German Basketball League. The neighborhood duel with FRAPORT SKYLINERS tips off at 3 p.m. on Sunday, after which Head Coach Denis Wucherer and his team travel to Aarhus to play Bakken Bears, a club that holds a record number of Danish championship titles, in the quarter-final of the FIBA Europe Cup on Wednesday (tip-off: 6:30 p.m.).

s.Oliver Würzburg travels 120 kilometers up the River Main to Frankfurt on Sunday, aiming to defend eighth place in the table in the easyCredit German Basketball League. “All our games are important now. We’re entering the finishing straight in the battle for the playoffs and face a direct rival who is back in contention,” says Wucherer ahead of the Main derby: “We’re up against a strong opponent on Sunday. As is traditional, Frankfurt is back to full strength and fit late in the season. They’ve only been together a few weeks in the lineup they’ll play in up to the end of the season and are playing better than before.”

Wucherer knows the Fraport Arena from his time as a player when he was briefly engaged by Frankfurt in the 2001/2002 season. The club from Hesse has center Leon Kratzer, a former Würzburg player, in its squad, while Würzburg have two players who were in Frankfurt for a lengthy spell: Johannes Richter (2013 to 2016) and Mike Morrison, a 29-year-old American who played 137 German league games for SKYLINERS in the past four seasons. “Mike is definitely in the team on Sunday. It can be a good day for him,” adds Wucherer. He is able to call on a full squad at present and will not decide which of the other six foreign players will have a break until the actual day of the game.

Frankfurt and Würzburg fought for the eighth and last playoff berth right up to the last game day of the regular season last year. In the end, it was the club from Hesse that had its nose ahead with one win more and then went on to take the later title winners FC Bayern Munich to a fifth game in the quarter-finals. In the current season, the team of Head Coach Gordon Herbert advanced to the top 16 in the 7Days EuroCup, but is still performing quite a bit below its own expectations in the domestic league.

However, two victories in Göttingen and at home against Science City Jena mean Frankfurt now has nine wins under its belt and is back within striking distance of the playoff spots – and has also played one to two games less than the competition. One of the reasons for this upturn is the signing of U.S. playmaker Tyler Larson, who has not only made an average of 17.1 points, but also 5.1 assists in his first seven games – the best statistics among his teammates. The 34-year-old franchise player Quantez Robertson is now playing his 10th season in Frankfurt and is also the only one in the squad to have played in all 21 German league games of the SKYLINERs. An average of 10.6 points, 6.1 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.9 steals a game are testimony to the American’s qualities as an all-rounder.