Rebels Struggle with Momentum

The Essex Rebels Women’s basketball team continued to struggle to regain their footing this past Saturday, as they took on league title contenders Leicester Riders and came away with a loss. The Rebels who have played a busy schedule the past few weeks showed a bit of tiredness on the road trip, failing to ever get momentum going. In the previous match-up between the two teams, the Rebels came away with an impressive victory over the Riders who had recently been crowned Cup Final champions. Unfortunately, that was not the case in the second meeting. 

Throughout the first half the Rebels just couldn’t get it going on the offensive end, only scoring 21 points as they headed into the mid-game break. Despite all players getting on the floor and playing significant minutes, the Rebels had no answers to the aggressive defence of the Riders and despite a small burst of energy in the third quarter, continued to find the game too difficult to manage. The final score was 71-42 in favour of the Riders, and was the lowest scoring output by the Rebels all season. 

Head Coach Tom Sadler had this to say after the game, “we knew that Leicester was going to be well prepared today after handing them their only loss for the season so far. Our game plan was to be aggressive on both ends of the floor, aggressively run our sets, and be disruptive on the defensive end. Unfortunately, the energy and effort just wasn’t there today even though we had all 9 players get on court, to try and keep it fresh, and play significant minutes. It’s been a battle these last few weeks trying to get the team back to the standard they were playing at earlier in the season. The team knows that when we run our stuff hard and when we follow the game plan on defence, we put ourselves in great positions to win games, why we are choosing not to execute has been the ongoing question. It’s another quick turn around with a game again tomorrow, but we have to try and regain some momentum heading into the play-offs.”

Top Performers Rebels:

Lu Costa – 10 points, 10 rebounds

Top Performers Riders:

Amber Smith – 20 points, 10 rebounds

Anna Lappenkuper – 13 points, 5 rebounds

Holly Winterburn – 12 points, 8 assists

Azania Stewart – 10 points, 15 rebounds

The Rebels will get back on their home court within 24 hours of concluding this game, as they take on top of the table Sevenoaks Suns on Sunday.