2001-02Regular SeasonRound 10
January 10, 2002 CET: 00:00
Local time: 00:00 CRYSTAL PALACE NATIONAL SPORT CENTER
Opel Skyliners of Frankfurt will not be the team that lets London Towers ruin its hopes of making the Euroleague Top 16. The Skyliners made sure of that with a 77-94 win at London on Thursday to preserve their piece of a three-way tie for second place in Group B. All three of those 7-3 teams - Frankfurt, Barcelona and Union Olimpija - registered road wins in Week 10. Once again, one of the hottest new players in Europe, Marcus Goree, showed the way for Frankfurt. The small forward poured in 28 points for the winners and added 8 rebounds to a 46-31 advantae on the boards for the visitors. Chad Austin kicked in 17 points and 7 assists for Frankfurt, Virgil Stanescu and Pascal Roller 12 points each. London, which fell to 0-10 and few games left for winning a first one, got 19 ponts from Terrell Myers, but only six of those in the second half, when his team was still within four points of Frankfurt.

Towers took their recent fine shooting form into the game with Terrell Myers hitting their first 10 points, including two three-pointers, as the Londoners took an early 10-8 lead against two baskets from Chad Austin and a three from Roller. Roller's second shot from downtown, with 2:30 remaining in the quarter, gave Frankfurt a 19-17 lead, but Ronnie Baker and Myers both drove for two to restore the Towers lead before Virgil Stanescu equalised at 21-21 prior to the buzzer. Myers already had 12 for London, Roller and Austi had 10 each for Frankfurt.

Two baskets by Goree gave Frankfurt the lead at the start of the second quarter, 27-23. Trouble for Towers came with John White's third foul with 7:15 remaining of the half - the American had just notched his first basket. Huge dunks from Goree and Lokhmanchuk extended the lead to 31-25 before Eppehimer's three-point play kept Towers in touch at 5:00. A Myers free throw, a tip-in from Silas Cheung and a spin for two from Stuart Robbins tied the score at 33-33, but Frankfurt replied with a dunk from Goree and two on the break from Austin. Roller's three ignited a further 8-0 run which included another smash from Goree, as Frankfurt took a 38-47 halftime lead. Goree had 12 points in the quarter for 15 on the half and Austin had 13. Myers led the Towers with 13 points and Eppehimer had 9.

Frankfurt started the second half with dunks from Lokhmanchuk and Goree before White replied with a three for 51-41 Skyliners. Lokhmanchuk and Jeff Kent then hit a three for each team before Eppehimer's two drives got Towers back to within 50-54. But Lokhmanchuk nailed another three and Frankfurt had breathing room once again at 57-50 with 5:33 remaining. The Ukrainian then drew a crucial fourth foul on White and hit one of his two free throws. Goree's three-pointer took him to 18 points and Frankfurt to 50-61. London's attack of third quarter-itis was worsened helped by a bench technicalthat contributed to a 10-0 Frankfurt run spurred by five points from Stanescu. The visitors led 55-73 after three quarters.

Cheung hit a three at the start of the fourth to bring hopes of a Towers revival, then Baker, bumped by Roller, added a two. But Goree's pair of threes stabilised Frankfurt at 81-62. This was not to be the first win for London, and Frankfurt was keeping its head up in Group B, tied with an elite pair of competitors for second place with just four games left in the regular season.
Thursday, January 10, 2002
Rob Dugdale, London
No results found.
Referees: RAMOS, MATEO; LEPETIC, NIKOLA; GUIRAO, LUIS
Attendance: 1000
By Quarter1234
Kinder London Towers21171722
Opel Skyliners21262621
End of Quarter1234
Kinder London Towers21385577
Opel Skyliners21477394
Kinder London Towers
  Rebounds Blocks Fouls
# Player Min Pts 2FG 3FG FT O D T As St To Fv Ag Cm Rv PIR
4 BAKER, RONNIE 11:22 4 2/3     1   1     1     3 1 1
5 EPPEHEIMER, BRETT 30:05 15 5/11 1/6 2/2   1 1 4   3     1 3 8
6 CHEUNG, SILAS 22:14 8 1/2 1/2 3/3 1 2 3 1   1     1 1 9
7 WHITE, JOHN 22:50 14 1/3 4/6     2 2 2   1     4 3 12
8 TOMIC, DAVOR DNP - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
9 YOUNGBLOOD, ROBERT DNP - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
10 HENRY, WAYNE DNP - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
11 MYERS, TERRELL 33:29 19 6/10 2/6 1/2 1 2 3           3 4 14
12 HICKEY, PHILIP 26:53 8 2/5   4/4 1 5 6   1 2 1 1 4 3 9
14 KENT, JEFF 26:17 3 0/1 1/1     2 2 1 2   1   4   4
15 ROBBINS, STUART 26:50 6 2/10 0/1 2/4 2 3 5 1 1 1     3 3 1
Team           2 6 8     1     1   6
Totals 200:00 77 19/45 9/22 12/15 8 23 31 9 4 10 2 1 24 18 64
        42.2% 40.9% 80%
Head coach: LINDSTROM, DAVID
Min: Minutes played; Pts: Points; 2FG M-A: 2-point Field Goals (Made-Attempted); 3FG M-A: 3-point Field Goals (Made-Attempted); FT M-A: Free Throws (Made-Attempted); Rebounds: O (Offensive), D (Defensive), T (Total); As: Assists; St: Steals; To: Turnovers; Bl: Blocks (Fv: In Favor / Ag: Against); Fouls: Cm (Commited), Rv (Received); PIR: Performance Index Rating
Opel Skyliners
  Rebounds Blocks Fouls
# Player Min Pts 2FG 3FG FT O D T As St To Fv Ag Cm Rv PIR
4 STANESCU, VIRGIL 18:56 12 4/7   4/6 3 6 9   1 1     1 4 19
6 DIARRA, IBRAHIM 25:16   0/2   0/2 2 1 3 2   2     1 1 -1
7 NURNBERGER, KAI 9:54   0/2           1       1 2   -4
8 GOREE, MARCUS 31:49 28 8/11 3/4 3/5 2 6 8 3 1 2   1 2 4 33
9 WINTERMANTEL, ROBERT 2:26 3   1/1                       3
11 ROLLER, PASCAL 26:06 12   3/7 3/4   4 4 1   1     2 4 13
12 AUSTIN, CHAD 31:56 17 7/13 0/3 3/4 1 2 3 7         3 3 17
13 MARAS, ROBERT 25:25 2 1/3 0/1   2 5 7   1 2 1   4 2 4
14 LUTCKE, NIKLAS 3:12 9   3/5         1             8
15 LOKHMANCHUK, ALEXANDER 25:00 11 5/7   1/4 2 5 7 1 2 1     3 5 17
Team           1 4 5     2         3
Totals 200:00 94 25/45 10/21 14/25 13 33 46 16 5 11 1 2 18 23 112
        55.6% 47.6% 56%
Head coach: HERBERT, GORDON
This game is not yet played

Head Coaches

LINDSTROM, DAVID
Kinder London Towers
If you look at the quarter scores we played well in the first quarter and I thought that in the last quarter, although it would have been easy to say, ' here we are again, it's gone,' our guys continued to play hard. We talked about that - playing hard all the way through. I'm still not sure, however, that our intensity is there for the full 40 minutes. On the technical foul - called for something someone on the bench said): My biggest frustration was for the players - Terrell was playing well in the first half and after that, it seemed there was a lot of holding going on out there. We ask our players to play hard and strive for consistency and the officials have a tough job. As a coach, you hope what hey call at one end, they will call at the other.
HERBERT, GORDON
Opel Skyliners
This game scared me. I knew Towers had been playing well in the English league. They havegod individual perimeter players - we did not take this game lightly. Myers got on fire early - he just got open and - boom! And Austin is a good defender. When we put Diarra on him he did a good job. (on Alexander Lokhmanchuk): "He came in and played some great basketball - yet he's been out hurt for the last 10 days. Yesterday was his first practice. He gave us a huge lift off the bench. It' not quite o surprising about Goree - he's been doing that all year for us. Ou destiny is still in our own hands - it doesn't matter what everyone else does. We've got a big game in Kaunas next week and three tough games to go after that. I think we need to win two of our next four to make the next phase.

Players

HICKEY, PHILIP
Kinder London Towers
We're slowly getting better - we're almost t the point of being a completely healthy team(!). We've been playing really well in the BBL games and we've come to the stage where we're starting to feed off each other's confidence. I was surprised that we did badly in the third quarter, because that's th time when we've been taking care of teams in the BBL. Frankfurt made the physial plays and that gave them a winning lead. These defeats took a toll on us mentally at the star of the season - it's two different styles of basketball in Britain and Europe. Now we're learning to play the Euroleague games and get over them before we go back into the BBL."
GOREE, MARCUS
Opel Skyliners
I think we were a littl bit hyped up at the start of the game, oo intense. We wanted to play too fast. We had to calm down and I found I had to slow my motion down a bit. We have a lot of togthernes now on this team and we know each other well and hat shows on court. We just have to keep playing with confidence - London are a great team - they just play their style of basktball...(laughs)..they've got some great atletes, I just can't se why they're not winning
No results found.