The Taunton Huish Tigers under 18's started their National Cup campaign against UWIC Archers on the second day of a double header weekend which had seen them defeat Brixton Topcats in overtime the day before.
Tigers got off to a great start and had soon built a significant early lead. After just 4 minutes of the first quarter the score was 12 – 5 in favour of Taunton. Tigers relaxed on defence giving UWIC more room towards the end of the quarter, allowing them back into the game. The score at the end of the first quarter was tied 19 – 19.
Tigers adjust their defence in the second quarter and kept UWIC to less than 10 points giving them a 10 point lead at half time. Tiger maintained this till the end of the third quarter but once again were unable to stop UWIC making a surge bringing the game to within 5 points.
In the last quarter UWIC played a zone defence which Tigers struggled against, failing to score in the first 6 minutes of the quarter. It was only strong defensive work that managed to keep Tigers in the lead. With 2 minutes remaining the score was 53 – 51 to Taunton but from that moment it was only Tigers who scored the points winning the game by 10 points.
Offensively Tigers were led by Lewis Ubaka with 28 points and Oliver Sandys with 16 points and 18 rebounds including 12 offensive.
Head Coach, Lukasz Sokolowski had this to say,
“It wasn't a great performance for us but proved that we are moving forward in the right direction. We played with great desire on defence. We are still making some simple mistakes but we are showing better defensive consistency for longer periods of the game. Offensively we looked much better than yesterday. We did set up some individual objectives for the game and players tried to stick to them. Of course we missed some open shots but it is open shots that we were looking for in the first place, so I was happy we stuck to the game plan. Generally I am happy with our performance, it was been a good weekend for us.”