For one night only

The sides have already met in the two-leg BBL Cup final, with Tigers overturning a 97-90 defeat in the north east with a stunning 114-85 victory at Echo Arena to reach the title game. September’s BBL Championship game between the teams also ended in a big Tigers victory as they hammered Eagles 80-58 in Liverpool.

It will be a homecoming for Tigers players Andy Thomson and James Jones who came through the Manchester Magic junior programme, and Jones can’t wait to get into action at the Amaechi Centre: “I’m really looking forward to my first pro game in Manchester. It’s where I play in the summer because Magic run an open gym, and although I don’t want to jinx things, I’m used to the court.

He continued, “It’ll be the first BBL game in Manchester for a long time, and they’re doing us a big favour. Hopefully one day there will be a BBL team back in the city again.”

Jones knows the threat that a Newcastle team who have won ten straight games pose to the Tigers, “You have to start with the three main scorers – Trey Moore, Joe Chapman and Charles Smith – but they have some really good complimentary players. Those three will score some points whatever you do, but you need to limit them, and stop the energy that the other players bring. Above all, we need to get back to playing the way we were when we knocked them out of the BBL Cup.

Says Jones, “Hopefully Nate [Reinking] will be back with us on Wednesday, but it might be a game-time decision”.

Jones is excited about the prospect of playing at the O2, and also wants to put the BBL Cup final disappointment behind him: “Playing at the O2 is a real incentive to get to the final, and after our performance against Sheffield we want to the chance to put that behind us. We won’t ever forget that performance, and want to make amends.”

Tigers faced a double header against neighbours Cheshire Jets over the weekend, with each side winning on their opponent’s court, and Jones was only partially happy with how Mersey played: “Personally I was terrible on Friday, and I think we’re suffering from a bit of a cup hangover. We decided to play in the second half, and we probably should have won – although we didn’t deserve to.

“It was a role reversal on Sunday. We were up by 17 at half-time, and had expended a lot of energy building that lead. Jets came back in the second half, but we hung on and it was good to get back to win.

Tigers’ coach Tony Garbelotto admits that it was hard to lift his side after their loss in the BBL Cup final: “It was extremely hard. I don’t think we will get over the loss any time soon. It was not losing that was the problem, it was the way we played and looked physically. It will take real character for these players, myself and staff to raise our level to over come this disappointment.

Eagles player-coach Fab Flournoy knows that facing the same side twice in three days brings different challenges for his team: “It will be an interesting challenge” he said. There will be little time between the games to make practice court adjustments so we will just have to try and adapt our in game strategies. Hopefully the numerous tough games we had earlier on in the season will help prepare us for that.”