The s.Oliver Würzburg team beats the Braunschweig Basketball Lions 93:89

Only the second home game won in seven games in Würzburg! It was a hard-fought match on Saturday, all the way to the final siren – but s.Oliver Würzburg came out on top against the Basketball Lions of Braunschweig 93:89 (41:40). Würzburg players Brendan Lane and Jake Odum set personal bests in the easyCredit German Basketball League with 30 points (22 of them in the second half) and 14 assists respectively.

In this bottom-of-the-table battle, Marshawn Powell joined the starting line for the first time this season – Max Ugrai came off the bench. Powell, a power forward, usually stays under the basket, but there wasn’t much happening there for the Wurzburg team at the beginning of the game. However, three-pointers were being scored by both the home and away teams. The home side scored its first fifteen points thanks to five successful shots behind the 6.75-meter line and the men from Lower Saxony nailed six of their first ten attempts at distance throws. Number five came from the excellent Carlton Guyton at the end of the first quarter, number six from the Lithuanian Thomas Klepeisz at the beginning of the second quarter – and with the score at 19:26, the Braunschweig Lions had a clear lead for the first time. After this, the Würzburg team came into the game much more– Captain Krešimir Loncar, Charles Barton and Felix Hoffmann controlled the offensive, reducing the deficit to 29:30 by the 15th minute and causing Braunschweig trainer Frank Menz to call a timeout. The guests then increased their lead, before Würzburg’s Brendan Lane and Lamont Ulmer came to the fore, transforming the 29:35 deficit into a narrow 41:40 lead. Thanks to their superiority on the offensive – 14 offensive rebounds were scored after the first half – the hosts were able to compensate for their much weaker shooting average.

The first minutes of the second half also saw a hard-fought and even game. In the third quarter, it was again Brendan Lane who received the assists from Jake Odum to score – the center scored half of his 30 points between the 20th and 30th minutes. The hosts finally managed to pull away for the first time when Maurice Stuckey scored a three-pointer to make the score 60:53. Two minutes later Lane increased the score to 68:57 – 11 points of a difference, the first and only double-digit difference of the entire game. The fans didn’t have to wait long for the response from the best away team players, Carlton Guyton and Dyshawn Pierre (these two scored 49 of Braunschweig’s 89 points total). The Lions’ duo scored a quarter-overlapping 13-point run on their own, taking the score from 70:63 (30th minute) to 70:76 (34). “We didn’t even attack the basket in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter,” said s.Oliver Würzburg head coach Doug Spradley after the game. It took until the 36th minute for Brendan Lane to score the first points of the quarter for Wurzburg. It was the start of a successful comeback – Lamonte Ulmer and Moe Stuckey converted two three-pointers and Jake Odum (10 points and 9 assists in the second half) put the hosts back into the lead with two free throws... 82:80! Brendan Lane scored the decisive points exactly 76 seconds before the final siren, when he got his second three-pointer of the game to make it 85:82. Jake Odum also scored a little later to make it 87:84, then Lane, Ulmer and Odum scored with six successful free throws in the final minute of overtime – and the fourth s.Oliver Würzburg victory of the season was in the bag!