Restart after 5 1/2 months

After a long break without games, our Seniors Men and Women teams could finally play again a basketball game yesterday.

In the Men's game, Sparta faced Bascharage, a second league team. In the first quarter, Sparta had a lot of trouble to find their rhythm. Bascharage started practice already beginning of August and this physical difference could be seen immediately (12-25). Sparta started the game with newcomer Mathis Wolff and youngster Angelos Giannopoulos inside, captain Pit Koster, Yannick Verbeelen an Philippe Arendt on the guard spots. In the second quarter, Sparta controlled the strong inside presence of Bascharage with their 2 pro players and their 3rd "Non Jicl" player better and found their offensive rhythm already more. At halftime, we could reduce the score to a 10 point game. (28-38)

In the second half, the physical advantage of the Hedgehogs was very clear. Coach Meurs continued to rotate in all bench players and gave a chance to everyone to show his potential. At the end Bascharage gets the win with 82-48. But the most important for us was to get back on the court and to start to find playing rhythm again. Bascharage was a good first opponent - our team was challenged in strong way for 4 quarters and that's what we need in preseason.

Scorers: Wolff 13, Verbeelen 9, Feipel 8, Koster 4, P Arendt 5, Giannopoulos 2, Toussaint 2, M Arendt 2, Savic 2, Stein 1, Schomer 0, Braun 0.

After this game, our women played against Saarlouis/Dillingen, a second league team from Germany. Our girls had big physical disadvantage without their 2 pro players against a strong German team. In the first half, the girls could compete quite well (22-40) but in the second half, Dillingen dominated physically like Bascharage in the Men's game. At the end it was a clear 98-40 win for the Germans. Today, the team of coach Kries will face 2nd league team Eastside Pirates.