Head Coach of the London Lions, Mark Clark, has won the Molten WBBL Coach of the Month Award for December to finish off a profoundly successful 2022 calendar year as they remain unbeaten atop the WBBL Championship table and have reached the WBBL Cup Final during the month.

Lions are defending both of those pieces of silverware following a clean sweep last season, and an unbeaten month of December in which they went 3-0 has kept them on track to attempt a repeat of that feat as they improved to 7-0 in league play and finished the month by beating in-form Sevenoaks Suns in the WBBL Cup semi-final.

That 84-69 road win was the highlight of the month as Lions had to overturn a rare early deficit in a hotly contested clash against a near rival from recent campaigns, using a 21-7 surge around Clark’s halftime team talk to stamp their authority on the biggest game of the season to that point, forcing 22 turnovers from their hosts.

The win has set up a WBBL Cup Final against Leicester Riders at the end of January at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham, live on Sky Sports, after Lions beat Newcastle Eagles a year ago to lift the WBBL Cup for the first time.

In defence of their WBBL Championship crown, Lions had a big win over Nottingham Wildcats with Holly Winterburn scoring 25 points and Shequila Joseph posting a double-double from the bench; and opened the month with a road win at Cardiff Met Archers, again using a big second stanza in a game where Kiki Herbert Harrigan scored 23 and Kennedy Leonard had a double-double of 12 points and 14 assists.

Coach Clark’s offence is purring at the moment as Lions are, by far, the highest scoring team in the BBL with an average of 94 points per game, but the impressive team-first ethos is demonstrated by the fact that they don’t have any player in the top ten of the scoring charts, while nine players have averaged at least eight points per game, led by former WNBA star Herbert Harrigan on 18 and Great Britain International Winterburn on 15. In addition, they boast three of the league’s top five in assists in Leonard, Taylor Murray and Winterburn.

London now face a challenging January on the road, as they first make a trip to Brent Bulls in the WBBL Trophy, before travelling to face Essex Rebels and Newcastle Eagles in the league ahead of the WBBL Cup Final on Sunday 29th January.