Flyers suffer devastating loss at home to Derby

The Flyers league campaign suffered a severe blow on Saturday as the Bristol side lost at home to a strong Derby outfit, 80 to 101. Derby with this win go top of the table while Flyers hopes for a top 4 finish become extremely difficult.

Top scorers for Flyers were Rob Loftman and Arek Makowski with 22 and 16 points while Joel Madourie and Simon Allaway led all scorers for Derby with 20 and 19 points.

Flyers Coach Andreas Kapoulas was not pleased with his team performance and warned his players for the difficult road ahead:

‘Derby had a great offensive game. Allaway shot the ball really well while the inside players caused us a lot of match-up problems. We were really poor defensively and failed to achieve the goals that we discussed before the start of the game.’

‘We have a really tough schedule ahead. From now on every game is really important in our effort to secure a playoff spot. We need to improve and simply enough there are no more excuses.’

Derby took the early lead with two threes by Shaw and Allaway and never looked back to secure a 20 to 25 first period lead. Derby fuelled with a 9-2 run at the start of the second period, led by as many 13 points before Bristol’s Mike Gregory with 2 quick threes brought the different down to 2. Derby though responded with confidence and with 9 unanswered points went to the changing rooms up by 11, 40-51.

Flyers situation did not improve in the second half as Derby extended their lead to 23 by the end of third period, 54-77. The Bristol side despite having one of the worst evenings the WISE campus venue has ever seen, tried to get back in the game.  A winning 26 to 24 last period performance was not enough for the Flyers who suffered one of the most devastating losses of the season.

Flyers now have to put everything behind as they face the Manchester Magic on Sunday 31^st January for the National Cup Final in a winner takes it all game.