Bristol Flyers cemented their place in the BBL Cup semi-final with an emphatic 81-58 victory against Sheffield Sharks away from home.
The visitors were rarely troubled as Coach Andreas Kapoulas’s side handed Sheffield their first home defeat of the season to set up a two-legged affair with London City Royals for a place at the Arena Birmingham in January.
Flyers had struggled to get out of first gear in their previous game against London Lions, and did not start much better with the scoreboard reading 5-5 after the first five minutes.
A 10-2 run followed and Levi Bradley beat the clock to give Flyers a 10-17 lead after the first 10 minutes.
The hosts rallied back in the second period and held Bristol to just 12 points to make it a one-point margin at the half, but a scoring explosion in the third quarter put the result beyond doubt to book Flyers’ place in the final four.
TURNING POINT
Bristol outscored their opponents 52-31 in the second half in a dominant defensive display. Sheffield finished the game with 58 points, whilst the Flyers totalled 52 points in the second half alone.
It was an uncharacteristic performance for Sheffield, who struggled from the three-point line, converting just 8% of their shots, with Bristol holding their top scorer Mackey McKnight to just 16 points. Sharks’ Connor Cashaw, who led the game with 11 points at half-time, was held scoreless for the remainder of the game.
PLAYER OF THE GAME
Gentrey Thomas continued his fine start to his BBL campaign, pouring in a game-high 25 points to go along with five rebounds and five assists, with Fred Thomas and Levi Bradley adding 15 and 14 points respectively.
WHAT COACH SAID
"It was a very good defensive performance - I felt we did a very good job of frustrating their guards and making it very difficult for their bigs inside. We stuck to our game plan and we never gave them anything easy on the defensive end.
"It was the type of performance that we needed to book our place in the semi-final. We knew that Sheffield were a very consistent team up until this point and we knew it was going to be difficult, but we did the things we had to do to win the ball game.
"I feel that we’ve been improving every week. We’ve had a couple of slips along the way, but we’re still finding out how we can be the most effective on the court.
"It’s a great achievement to be in the semi-finals. It’s something that we haven’t been able to do since our first year in the league.
"We now have a two-legged series against London City Royals, who we knew well from our group stage, but for now our attention turns to the league campaign.
"Our first game is at home against Sheffield and they certainly will not be happy about losing to us in the Cup, so we need to be ready to put in another 40 minute performance."
WHO'S NEXT?
Sheffield will be looking for revenge when they face Bristol as the SGS College Arena in the opening game of the regular season on Friday, December 6th (7.30pm tip-off).
