The Kent Crusaders Under 14’s team had another two away wins on Sunday 7^th December against Camden Jaz and Ipswich Tomcats. The team wanted to carry on their winning run of 2 games and did just that in Ipswich.

The first game was against Camden Jaz. A team that they had beaten previously in the season. After a shaky start Crusaders started to put some points on the board and finished the first quarter 12-7 up. Coach Matt Fenton wasn’t impressed with some poor passing and poor offensive play and the team slowly got their game together and scored another 10 points to Camden’s 6 in the 2^nd quarter. As in other games this season, the third quarter seems to be Crusaders worst one and they tied the scoring 11-11. However Crusaders finished strongly in the fourth quarter 17-6 to finish up winning 30-50. This wasn’t a great display by Crusaders but it was good to see them put out the win whilst not at the top of their game.

Coach Matt Fenton said “I think the boys would be the first to admit that this was by no means our best performance of the season, but bearing in mind we still beat a much improved Camden team by 30 points it shows the high expectations the boys set themselves.”

Coach Fenton’s MVP for this game was Joe Denton.
Next up was Ipswich Tomcats. Crusaders had not played them before and they seemed to have had similar results to Crusaders so far in other games so the team knew it was going to be a close game.

Crusaders started well with Liam Carpenter putting up 3 early baskets which seemed to settle the Kent side. Ipswich however played a steady game and ended up nudging ahead in the first quarter 13-10. Crusaders stuck to the their game plan and kept the scores fairly even before losing some concentration towards the end of the second quarter and going in at half time 4 points down.

Once again the 3^rd quarter was Crusaders worst with poor passing decisions and they seemed to let the game get away from them by going 10 points behind with a few minutes of the quarter to end. They ended the third quarter 8 points down.

For the first half of the game Crusaders big men found it difficult to contain the tallest Ipswich player where most of the play was going through, but they worked at it and it paid off in the second half of the game and Crusaders did well to turn their effective defence into fast break offence.

After the last talk from Coach Matt Fenton the Crusaders came out fighting and drew the game level at 52-52 with less than 2 minutes to go. Then two quick baskets and three free throws came in the next minute and the game was put out of reach with just 20 seconds left. Ipswich had a final free throw and the game finished 53-59

Kent Crusaders had turned over a 8 point defecit going into the last quarter and put up 23 points to Ipswich’s 11. Crusaders had trailed in every other quarter. The whole team kept their heads up with a belief that they could finish the game strongly.

Coach Matt Fenton said “Well done to the boys for keeping their nerve in another tight encounter. Many teams would have crumbled being 10 points down with 10 minutes remaining when playing against a team which included the England U14 power forward, but the team spirit and never say die attitude was the key determinate in the victory.”

Coach Fenton’s MVP for this game was Callum Thomas.

The Crusaders Under 14 team face another tough double header at home next week against the current league leaders Newham Youngbloods and Guildford Heat. Crusaders have now won 4 of their 5 league games and are second in the table with 13 points.

Statistics – Camden Jaz Game

EBL National League Under 14’s Boys South II Division

Camden Jaz (7, 13, 24) 30

Kent Crusaders (12, 22, 33) 50

Scoring:

Kent: Jonathon Appiah 11, Callum Thomas 10, Alex Armstrong 7

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 12:07 am and is filed under Under 14s. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.