Vaidas on target again but College go down to Aylesford
VAIDAS Cerkunovuas shot the lights out at Moreton Morrell, but he could not prevent his side Coventry College going down 76-60 to a better all-round team performance from Aylesford Hawks.
Cerkunovas, the runaway leading scoring in Division Three last season, before College leap-frogged the second division into the top flight, turned back the clock to land an impressive 37 points for Coventry, which included sixteen of twenty free shots taken in a tough, competitive game.
As a result, Hawks move into second place in Division One, although they have played more games than the rest, but, if the shooting prize belonged to the Lithuanian, the team award was certainly that of the victors.
And it was Hawks’ stunning start to the second half that saw them move well clear, after leading 35-31 at the interval, and the driving force in their ascent was Ricky Fennell who added to his ten point first-half haul to set up a 16-2 break and stop their visitors in their tracks.
Baskets from Gareth Davies and Ruben Ramos also piled it on with Hawks flying, but Coventry were not finished and they stormed back into contention at 54-46 before Fennell struck gold to land a pair of triples, and with Davies grabbing one too, Aylesford looked home and dry at 63-48.
They went again in the closing minutes to go twenty one ahead before a flurry of activity around the home side’s basket took it to the buzzer and a sixteen point margin. Cerkunovas shot 37 points for College with Fennell making five triples in his 29.
The race for promotion from Division Two took another twist as Warwick Grizzlies inflicted a second defeat in five days on the leaders Cracovia Stratford, and the two swap places with Grizzlies now in pole position. Hot on their heels are Warwick China Red who followed up their win over Stratford with a comfortable 64-44 victory against Coventry Tornadoes for whom Michael Stokes led on 21. Tile Hill Trojans demolished Ernesford Eagles 69-39 on the back of a superb second half performance which saw them out-score their hosts 2 to 1. Trojans were ten up at half-time, then hit a 16-0 burst mid-way through the third period to kill off any hopes Eagles had of landing a winning total. A first period score of 32-11 meant that there was only going to be one winner in the game between Westwood Rhinos and Nuneaton Predators, and Rhinos kept it going throughout to record their best result of the season as they won 91-36.
They were in total control of the game with Jack Ford totalling 32 points in their victory. Team Rebels called off their visit to Tile Hill 3 two hours before the scheduled start due to illness injury to several of their squad.