Westfield Sharks Sheffield won the BBL Championship Northern Conference title on Sunday afternoon, a fortnight ahead of the end of the regular season. The title came courtesy of an 83-69 success at home to Derby Storm at Ponds Forge ISC.
 
The title is the first conference success for the Sharks, who last season fell just short, finishing
second behind Manchester Giants. This season, it is Chester Jets who are the runners-up.
 
Jets cannot mathematically pass the Sharks now, courtesy of a superior conference record. At
present, Sharks record in Northern Conference games is 19-4, while the best that Chester can
achieve is 18 conference successes.
 
Sharks' Head Coach, Chris Finch, took the success in his stride. 

"It's an achievement of one of our goals certainly," he explained. "But, we hope to achieve another goal and that's the Championship."
 
However, today's victory over Derby was not all plain sailing. Sharks needed to pull out a comeback to defeat Derby, after the Storm dominated much of the first half, pulling out a 15-point lead at one point, at 40-25 midway through the second quarter. Sharks fought back to tie the score at 61-61 by the end of the third quarter. 
 
Then, Sharks' star man Peter Scantlebury stepped up to inspire his team's charge, with six points in an 11-0 run, that put Sharks 72-63 to the good. The home side then finished the game with eight of the final ten points of the game to seal the victory.
 
Sharks were presented with the BBL Championship Northern Conference trophy after the game by BBL Chief Executive Mike Smith.
 
This success means that Sharks will not enter the knock-out stages of the BBL Championship until the semi-final stage, which takes place at the Skydome Arena in Coventry on Saturday 21 April.

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