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Successful big-game hunting: Cool Coburg slays Erfurt Lions

Coburg, 10-26-2019

There were various premieres in the BARMER ProB South 2nd German Basketball League on Saturday evening: BBC Coburg chalked up its first home win of the season, its first-ever win against Basketball Lions Erfurt – by the margin of 80:69 (41:31) – and its first two-game winning streak in the new campaign.

The very first points on Saturday evening were a statement: Sven Lorber stole possession and sent Shore Adenekan storming to the basket on his own to smash the ball through the hoop. Although Coburg conceded too many turnovers, it was still able to stretch its lead: Daniel Urbano scored at the basket to make it 16:8 in the 6th minute and Constantin Ebert brought the first period to an end with a buzzer-beater from just inside the arc (20:14).

The captain then took the game by the scruff of its neck in the second quarter: Christopher Wolf added seven points in succession to increase the gap to 32:25 in the 16th minute. Shortly after that, the visitors took an in-bounds pass after calling a timeout, but overlooked Ebert: The point guard stole the ball and set up Urbano, who was completely free to make a slam-dunk to the cheers of the 512 spectators at the Lauterer Höhe and give the BBC its first double-digit advantage (36:25 in the 17th minute). The teams went in at half-time with the score at 41:31.

After the break, the encounter was a little more sluggish than in the first half and it was only toward the end of the third period that it picked up a bit more pace again: Adenekan spectacularly blocked an attempted lay-up by Robert Franklin and shortly after that the two youngsters Jevon Perschnick and Nico Wenzl combined to set up Wenzl for a bucket from downtown (55:41 in the 29th minute). The BBC went into the final ten minutes ahead by 56:45.

And they turned out to be really spectacular: Princeton Onwas, who demonstrated his abilities as an all-rounder, spotted a gap, threw the ball up into the air and found Adenekan, who slammed the ball into the basket. And barely two minutes later, there was almost a carbon copy of the move: Onwas looked, searched and found Adenekan who caught the ball and stuffed it through the hoop to the cheers of the crowd. That made it 65:55 with five-and-a-half minutes to go and the atmosphere in the HUK-COBURG Arena was at boiling point.

Yet they were not just beautifully carved-out points, but important ones too, since although Erfurt was not able to reduce the deficit, neither was the BBC able to pull further in front. It was therefore also important that Sven Lorber, who had been inconspicuous up to then, turned on the heat in crunch time: First of all he darted from his own baseline to Erfurt’s basket and laid the ball off to a teammate, drained a three shortly afterwards, stole possession and added a lay-up on a fast break, stole the ball again and buried another bucket from outside, and then helped Christopher Wolf notch up two more points at the start of the final minute: 80:66, the game was sealed, and 44 seconds later the BBC’s players were able to take a lap of honor on their home turf for the first time this season.

Head Coach Ulf Schabacker was satisfied with his team afterwards: “We’ve clearly taken a step forward. We moved the ball better in offense and the crowd got to see some attractive moves: The alley oops from Shore and the nicely created threes by Sven at the end were superb. We needed two attacks against Erfurt’s press defense, but then attacked well and won deservedly in the end.”

The joy at winning was also written in Sven Lorber’s face: “The first home victory fells really good and was important for us as a team. We played better together and did a good job of keeping our opposite numbers in front of us in defense. We now hope we can keep that up in Munich.”

BBC Coburg’s next game is on the road against FC Bayern Munich on Saturday, November 2, 2019.