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Line-ups set for NBL finales
The prospects for the inaugural NBL Championships Finals weekend look even brighter after this weekend’s semi-finals saw the top two remaining seeds in each division safely negotiating their way into their respective Finals.
In Division One, Men, we have the mouth-watering prospect of a rematch between last season’s Division Two Finalists, Torlane Derbyshire Arrows and Finsoft Ealing Tornados.
The Arrows brushed aside the challenge from fourth-placed Oxford Devils, building a 20-point half-time lead from which they never looked back, but Ealing had a tougher game against their old rivals Ware Rebels, coming back from six points down at the end of the third to take the game by seven, and put the Rebels out at the semi-final stage for the second year running.
Performances in Division One Women were, if anything, even more convincing, as League Champions Sheffield Hatters eased up in the final quarter to beat Thames Valley Tigers by eighteen. Defending play-off Champions Rhonnda Rebels pulled steadily away from Nottingham Wildcats, the team whose victory in the penultimate game of the season had denied the Rebels the League title, to take the game by 26.
In Division Two Men, Bristol Bombers remain unbeaten for the season, as they defeated Northern runners-up Middlesbrough College by fifteen. Middlesbrough led by two at the half, but a 20-13 third quarter put the Bombers in control, and they pulled away to a 15-point victory over the team that they had previously defeated in the NBL Shield Final.
Winners of Division 2 North, Dudley Bears, put out Barking & Dagenham, of the Southern Division, by twenty-six points, to set up a first meeting of the season with Bristol in what promises to be a classic North v. South encounter.
The only division in which the top two original seeds will not contest the Final is Women’s Division Two, where the winners of the South, Plymouth Racers, had already been put out, in the quarter final, by the fourth placed Northern team, Ipswich Bobcats.
That win gave Ipswich home advantage in the semi-finals against the Northern runners-up Stockport Lapwings, and this game proved to be just as close as the Women’s Trophy Final, between the same two, had been.
Ipswich restricted their visitors to just nine points in the first quarter, and led 15-9 at the first break, on the back of an 8-0 opening run. Kirsty Clark was playing well against Stockport’s American Jennifer Robinson, and helped her side to a 33-19 lead which threatened to break the game open in the second period.
Stockport’s revival was sparked by Claudia Leitner’s third 3-pointer of the quarter, and a 2-14 spell in the four minutes leading up the interval left the game finely poised at 35-33.
Neither side could break away in the second half, although Ipswich led by five a couple of times, and the margin was just a single point, in Ipswich’s favour, at the end of the third quarter, 55-54. Stockport took the lead for only the second time in the match, at the start of the fourth, but Ipswich edged ahead again, and with four minutes to play they led 63-58, which, in a tight, low scoring period looked as though it could be enough.Jo Clayden and Hayley Crosbie cut the lead to a single point with three minutes to play, and then Kirsty Clark fouled out, on a game-high 28 points. Defences remained uppermost, but Clayden took her tally to 25 points for the game with just a minute to play, with a basket that put the visitors into the lead again at 63-64.
Ipswich desperately searched for the basket that could turn the match back in their favour, but the Stockport defence held firm, and it was they who went through to face Birmingham Force in the Final.
In Birmingham the Northern Division champions had no such problems, despite a determined performance from Brighton Magic. The South Coast side had already inflicted two defeats on Southern Division winners Plymouth, on their way to snatching second place, but they found that the Force was indeed with Birmingham, as the home side steadily pulled away throughout the game for a 24 point victory.
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