WBBL Trophy, Semi-Final
London Lions 82-39 Nottingham Wildcats (20-18, 39-29, 55-33)
(Lions – Beckford-Norton 19, Leedham-Warner 17, Breen 12; Wildcats – Edmonds 13, Pannell 10, Gyles 4)
WBBL Championship
Manchester Met Mystics 86-53 Gloucester City Queens (24-8, 47-22, 64-41)
(Mystics – Williams 25, Bailey 16, Allen 14; Queens – James 17, Turner 14, Ball 10)
WBBL Championship
Oaklands Wolves 67-76 Essex Rebels (19-19, 34-38, 55-61)
(Wolves – Harrison 17, Sarson 15, Uprus 13; Rebels – Haines 17, Waithe 16, Costa 15)
WBBL Championship
Newcastle Eagles 59-82 Sheffield Hatters (17-24, 29-44, 45-66)
(Eagles – Gaynor 13, McVicar 12, Murphy 11; Hatters – Fong Lyew Quee 22, Gayle 15, Naylor 15)
A busy Saturday in the WBBL has seen London Lions qualify for the WBBL Trophy Final, where they will defend the crown that they won last season, while there were WBBL Championship wins for Sheffield Hatters, Manchester Met Mystics and Essex Rebels in the top six.
Lions hosted the team that they met in last year’s final, Nottingham Wildcats, and after a close start to the game they were absolutely dominant in the second half to win 82-39 as Shanice Beckford-Norton led their scoring with 19 points off the bench, hitting 3-4 (75%) from the three-point line.
After trailing in the first quarter, Lions snatched the lead when Holly Winterburn beat the buzzer with a sensational deep three-pointer, and that was a momentum-changer as they opened the second stanza on a 6-2 run and took a double-digit lead when Jo Leedham-Warner scored six points in a row midway through the period to make it 37-25.
Lions went on to dominate the second half with a fearsome defensive performance, holding their visitors to just ten points – four in the third quarter and six in the fourth – as they ran away with the game, not allowing Wildcats a field goal for over ten minutes at one stage, the lead going through 30 when Cassie Breen and Beckford-Norton scored consecutive triples early in the fourth.
Lions forced an astonishing 32 turnovers in the game, and converted those into 39 points, with five steals for Winterburn, while Beckford-Norton, Leedham-Warner and Kennedy Leonard had three each.
In league play, the third-placed Sheffield Hatters travelled to face Newcastle Eagles and consolidated their position with an 82-59 win, moving to a 12-3 record having suffered back-to-back defeats coming into the game.
After a slow start, trailing by nine points with five minutes played, Hatters sparked into life with a massive 18-0 surge as former Eagle Ebony Horton scored six, including the first four in the run, and Georgia Gayle matched that and capped the run with an ‘and one’ play that made the score 24-15, Eagles held scoreless for five minutes.
Nicolette Fong Lyew Quee then added 10 points in a 12-4 start to the second stanza and the lead was 36-21 midway through, and stayed in double-figures from there onwards, peaking at 70-45 when Hatters scored the last five of the third period and the first four of the fourth, sparked by an Abbey Whitehouse triple as she scored five in the run.
Overall, Fong Lyew Quee led the scoring with 22 points and six assists, while Horton did a bit of everything against her former club with 10 points, nine rebounds and five assists.
In pursuit of the top four, Manchester Met Mystics moved to 8-6 with a second consecutive league win as they beat Gloucester City Queens 86-53 at the National Basketball Performance Centre, behind 25 points from Erika Williams as she hit seven three-pointers at a rate of 46% in a game where Mystics connected 18 times from long-range.
The outcome was never in doubt after the hosts opened on a 21-7 surge in the first nine minutes, Williams scoring six before Georgia Jones hit a three to give them a double-digit lead and Erica Meyer came from the bench to score consecutively.
The lead was through 20 points when Rachel James also emerged from the bench to close the first quarter with a triple and open the second in the same manner, making it 29-8 when Dominique Allen scored.
And there was no way back for the visitors as Williams added another pair of three-pointers early in the third quarter to send the lead through 30 points.
Finally, Essex Rebels are back up to sixth place, leapfrogging Nottingham, as they also have back-to-back wins after a run of four defeats, beating Oaklands Wolves 76-67 on the road as DeAngelique Waithe came from the bench to post a double-double of 16 points and 11 rebounds, adding to 17 points from Megan Haines.
The teams were rarely separated by more than two shots through the first three quarters, Rebels holding a seven-point lead for a matter of seconds either side of half time, as there were 15 lead changes in the first 25 minutes of the game.
That was until, trailing inside the last four minutes of the third, Rebels crucially held their hosts scoreless for three minutes and rattled off seven straight points of their own, with consecutive Haines scores before Waithe made it 59-53.
The teams continued to trade blows through the fourth, until Haines scored consecutively again and finally gave the visitors more than a two-shot cushion at 67-59 with five minutes to play, and that proved decisive as Rebels held on from there to progress to 6-7 in the table.