Giants v Sharks Round 3

The Sharks had a comfortable 87-68 victory when the sides met in BBL Championship action on Sunday, and Giants coach Jeff Jones was clearly disappointed with his side’s display at the English Institute of Sport:

“Our effort against them was below an acceptable level across the board. I have been watching games in Sheffield for the past five or six years and you know what you’re going to get there and we fell short of matching their physical style and didn’t compete nearly hard enough as a team.

“We had about 10 minutes of competing and that isn’t enough against the better teams and Sheffield despite their league position have added some new personnel. In BJ Holmes they have a player that has played at high level at home and has the ability to make the people around him better.

“Holmes certainly impressed me and Demetrius Jemison was effective. He reminded me of a smaller version of Richie Gordon from Worcester last year – good athlete and very active. For us we guys who had spurts where they played at a decent level but it wasn’t consistent enough our concentration and aggressiveness never really matched theirs.

“Obviously we have to make adjustments and do some things differently but the main thing will be getting our mental approach right for the Trophy game on Thursday.

“We have to be aggressive attacking the basket, the foul count in the game was certainly one sided but most of that was our fault we let the little bumps and shoves put us on the back foot which in turn made us passive on the offensive end of the floor and didn’t give ourselves a chance of getting to the foul line. It will be different on Thursday.”

With a home quarter-final against either City of Edinburgh Kings or Glasgow Rocks on offer for the winner of Thursday’s tie, Jones is keen to do well in the Trophy: “Any competition is important from the perspective it’s a game and we want to win I know it sounds a little like a broken record this is a journey for us and believe me we are only just learning to walk so any win anywhere anytime for us is a good thing and that certainly is no different for the Trophy.

Sharks’ forward Andrew Bridge was understandably delighted with his side’s sixth Championship victory of the campaign: “It was a good win for us, and it was probably the best we’ve been at sticking to the game-plan all season. We held them to less than they normally score, which is good for us, and we scored around our normal rate. We stuck to the scouting report, and we need to keep doing that.

“I think it’ll be a bit different on Thursday as they will have gone away and worked on things. They’re a much better team at home than away, but for us it’s about playing to the same standard and coming out with a win.”

Bridge won the BBL Trophy with Newcastle Eagles last season, and he knows the importance of the game for Sharks on Thursday: “Obviously it’s a pretty big game for us, probably the biggest of the season right now. At the moment the Trophy is the best chance we have of winning something, but we’re not the kind of team who can look down the line at four games time. We need to approach every game focussed on winning that one.

“We should have beaten both Cheshire and Surrey recently. Against the Heat before Christmas we made a couple of mistakes down the stretch, they had a couple of big plays, and there were a couple of calls that could’ve gone either way. So we’re a little disappointed that we’re not on a six game winning streak in the league, but we bounced back against Giants and hopefully we can beat them again on Thursday.”

Story – BBL

Giants Photos – Russell Hart