Eagles look to get off to flying start

TONIGHT’S opening BBL Championship encounter sees Newcastle Eagles travel to fellow sponsorship stable-mates Leeds Force looking to get their league campaign off to a flying start, writes JEFF KING.

This is a very different-looking Eagles roster from previous seasons with only player-coach Fab Flournoy, guard Drew Lasker and forward Darius Defoe retained from last year’s squad.

That means seven players will make their competitive Eagles debut tonight in the BBL.

One of those, 6’ 2” shooting guard Jaysean Paige, pictured below, is a former stand-out star at highly-rated West Virginia University who did not have the best of times last season coming out of the US College.

Paige, though, has already shown in pre-season he has the talent to be a big-time scorer in the BBL

He is excited to get started in tonight’s first league game.

He said: “Pre-season is over but we are still working towards our goals.

“We have had a good pre-season and now we are ready to get this thing rolling.”

The Betway All-Stars Basketball tournament last weekend was something different for the sport in this country and, while successful, it was not the sort of basketball Paige is used to playing. Tonight will be different.

He added: “I enjoyed last weekend but proper basketball is what we have been working on all pre-season since we have been here.

“Sunday was a little different and we started off slowly but adjusted pretty well which I was good with and I am sure the whole core group was happy with too.”

“That is in the past and we don’t want to come up short this weekend.

“We are ready to play our style of basketball and what we have been working on.”

“We want to get this thing off on the right foot. Every game is important but this first one is really important. “The game we have on our hands is Leeds and that is the task now. We need to get them out of the way in the right way and then go forward from there.”