First win of the season for H1

SV70: ART Düsseldorf

81:79 (51:43)

Great start to the season for H1 getting a home win against a really good Düsseldorf  team. Playing against a Düsseldorf many pick to win the league, the guys came up big to start the season. The guys really put in the work in the preseason and it showed tonight. Playing without a full roster once again, everyone stepped up and put together a great team win.

I think this game was the best we have ever started a game. Lead by American PG Jeremy Lewis who finished with 17 of his 35 points in the 1st quarter. The team did a really good job of getting him open and getting him the ball in the right position. I think we really came and stuck to the game plan. Dusseldorf is a really tough team and really hard to match up again. I think from the beginning we was focus on 40 minutes of defense and took the lead 28-21 end of the 1st quarter.

In the second quarter Dusseldorf started to find more of their rhythm on offense. We knew we had to make them work the whole game if we had any chance to win. I think Mahmut Toptan and team captain Thorben Paulsen did a really good job against Dusseldorf guards. They made them work hard for every shot and that was the difference for us. First year player Marco Braun had to sit early in the second quarter with 3 fouls and that was a big difference for us. He is such an important player for our team, but lucky Alessandro was ready to step up. We was able to play with our bigger lineup and it helped us a lot of the rebound. Jeremy picked up a bad foul at the half time buzzer and Dusseldorf was able to make two free throws before half time to cut the lead to 8 points and we lead 51-43.

We had a really bad start in the 3rd quarter. We took bad shots and had 4 turnovers in the first 3 minutes and Dusseldorf was able to cut the lead to two points. After a timeout we was able to refocus and get back to playing our type of basketball. We knew we had to take care of the ball to have a chance against this team and the guys stepped up to the challenge. We finished the game with 14 turnover and that is the lowest total we had all of the preseason. Turnovers will be important for the team success this season.

The 4th quarter was even more madness from both team. Dusseldorf started to make shots and we had too many defensive breakdowns. Playing without a full roster, I think the guys started to get tired and started to lose focus. We started to take quick bad shots and started to play too much isolation basketball. That is really not our game and it helped Dusseldorf get the lead down. With under 2 minutes left in the game our Spanish profession Temur Kiknadze scored a monster put back dunk off a miss shot and gave us the little more energy we needed to finish off the game. This is just start of the season and only one win but it feels good to get the win against a really good team. The guys put in a lot of work and deserved this win, now it’s back to work on Monday to get ready for a really good Herten team on Friday. Great team win and hopefully the start to a successful season. Thanks to all the fan who came out and support.

Scoring: Lewis 35, Kiknadze 12, Paulsen 11, Fouhy 7, Braun 7, Toptan 7, Spitale 2, Stockey, L. Braun, Micanovic