Grand finale all in vain for the defeated Eagles
ACCORDING to mid-season recruit Brandon Peel, Newcastle Eagles’ players ‘watched a lot of film’ during the festive period.
Yet there was no time to settle down and enjoy Home Alone, Elf or It’s A Wonderful Life while pulling crackers and tucking into turkey.
Instead, Ian MacLeod’s men were forced to endure a series of painful screenings of their own nightmare before Christmas - a crushing 10172 loss at Leicester live on TV.
However, if MacLeod’s masterplan was to embarrass his roster into a suitably pugnacious response against Cheshire then it almost worked a treat. Almost.
If a feeble first half made for another video nasty then a blockbuster finale was worthy of the greatest Hollywood epic.
That Newcastle fell agonisingly short of a famous comeback win should not detract from a spirited second-half performance.
Yet it is increasingly clear the wildly-inconsistent Eagles have much work to do if the league’s most successful franchise is to double down on its dynasty in 2022.
It had taken 55 minutes of BBL basketball to separate the two teams on December 5 before Newcastle finally closed out a triple-overtime thriller. That painful defeat meant Ben Thomas’s team headed north with revenge in mind.
If facing a fired-up Phoenix would prove difficult enough for Newcastle then the absence of two high-energy players made the hosts’ task even tougher.
Daniel Johnson-Thompson is out for the season after suffering a knee injury at Cheshire earlier this month.
Corey Johnson failed to recover from a bout of Covid in time to take his place on court last night
Louis Sayers limping off four minutes before half-time hardly helped matters and the Phoenix must have sensed this was the perfect opportunity to avenge that heartbreaking loss just three weeks earlier.
A stunning start from Cheshire proved the visitors were in no mood to let slip another two points.
Larry Austin paced Phoenix from the tip as he plundered eight firstperiod points - combining cute half court pressure with a flurry of decisive fast-break finishes but the busy guard found support from Namon Wright and Noah Dickerson as the visitors flooded the Eagles’ paint.
A clearly concerned MacLeod and on-court general Rahmon Fletcher took every available opportunity to talk things through as nervy Newcastle went 10-0 and 22-7 down.
Familiar failings were costing the Eagles dearly as the BBL’s third-bottom club opened up a convincing 29-16 first-quarter lead.
Although Newcastle did do a better job of containing Cheshire’s offence in the second period there was little cheer at the other end.
Restricted to a paltry nine points in 10 minutes, it was difficult to recall a more lacklustre period from the men in black.
Had it not been for seven points off the bench from Kyle Williams who knows how far off the pace MacLeod’s men might have been with 20 minutes to play?
Okereafor was forced to raise his game after the restart as the Eagles finally ate away at Cheshire’s commanding lead.
Fletcher sparked an early 8-0 tear as Newcastle won the third quarter 20-15 before cutting the deficit to just four points with five minutes to play.
That man Williams fired the Eagles into their first lead of the night with three minutes left -only for the fearless Phoenix to rise from the flames and sentence Newcastle to a third defeat on the bounce.