Storm find the going tough at the top
Basketball Ayr Storm U16 men continued their Scottish Basketball Championship Division Three learning curve with a trip to the North central venue in Aberdeen for two games.
In previous rounds, there has been a tough game and a much easier game – the fixture list though saw Storm face the top two in the league away from the West central venue.
The opening game was against Fraserburgh who had lost only one game, to Inverness City, this season – who Ayr were to face in their second game.
Fraserburgh disrupted the Ayr offence and forced too many turnovers and picked up easy points to win the opening two periods.
Ayr tried to change things in P3 but Fraserburgh were just too strong at shutting down the Ayr scorers and only David Mexson ( 11pts) was making a move towards double figures.
P4 went Ayr’s way by one point but Fraserburgh ran out 62- 36 winners.
Coach Danny Gibbons set the team one objective for the game against league leaders Inverness City – return to at least three scoring threats and make the other team work harder for their points.
The result was a much better performance with Paul Gibbons ( 18pts) and Gabriel Lorimer ( 10pts) leading the way.
However, Inverness showed why they were top with a strong 25 points in P1. Ayr restricted them to 12 in P2 but in the other periods they shot well to win 89- 52.
In midweek, the team returned to SLBA action against tabletopping St Mirren in the U16 men cup.
A delay due to a sensitive sensor saw both sides spend 20 minutes in the Renfrewshire cold until the facility was checked.
This put both sides off their stride as neither got up to the standard of the league game three weeks earlier. St Mirren won 68- 31 to reach the cup semi- finals.
Next up is an SLBA game away to SL Colliers followed by two games in Glasgow in SBC Division Three.