The Men’s 1sts Basketball team played out an entertaining game against the University of Nottingham and were unlucky to fall to a 58-64 defeat at UB Sport & Fitness.
Home court advantage looked like to be a factor early in the first quarter, as Nottingham found themselves 11-2 down after a few minutes. Fraser Argyle was the danger man; sinking back-to-back threes to put the league leaders under pressure. They then called a timeout, and this proved to be to their advantage as they grew in to the quarter and went on a 12-4 run. The quarter ended with the score 15-18.
Birmingham’s downfall in that poor period had been their inability to protect the key, and their failure to secure many defensive rebounds, allowing the away team to score easy points, but again they started the quarter strongly and took a 1-point lead early on. The defence was tighter this quarter, but Nottingham took a 29-27 lead into halftime, with the Lions unfortunately missing 4 consecutive free throws in the last ten seconds.
Nottingham seemed to really assert themselves in the third quarter, going on a 6-0 run in the first minute, and at one stage the score was 37-51. Rueben Estrada then hit a great three pointer for Birmingham and followed it up with a steal and layup to make it an 8-point game at the end of the quarter, 45-53.
Momentum appeared to be in the hosts favour, taking the score to 50-53 and forcing Nottingham to take a timeout after 45 seconds. Incredibly, no points were scored for 3 minutes, until Modesto Vasquez made it a 1-point game with a nice layup. However, this was as close as Birmingham got, as the away team scored 8 points without reply. With a minute to play the score was 58-62 after Argyle hit another three, but Nottingham closed out the game well, and it finished 58-64.
A valiant performance from Birmingham against a Nottingham team with a lot of quality, with a small blip In the third quarter ultimately costing them the match. There were a lot of positives from this performance, and Lockdown 2018 on Saturday should be a great event.
