[11 FEB 10] CRUSADER NEWS

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Coventry Crusaders vs. Taunton Tigers & London Mets vs. Coventry Crusaders

Where: Coventry Sports Centre , Fairfax Street, Coventry, CV1 5RY.

When: Saturday 13th February 2010

Tip Off: 7:30pm

Competition: EBL Division One

By Adam Manning

COVENTRY Crusaders begin one of the most important weekend double headers this Saturday when they take on play-off rivals Taunton Tigers at the Coventry Sports Centre in their fourth and final meeting of the season, before Scott Neely’s troops travel down to eighth placed play-off hopefuls and National Trophy finalists London Mets on Sunday (4.00pm).

Saturday’s opponents sit in sixth spot in the league, four places and four points better off than Crusaders, who will be looking to close that gap and sit in joint fifth place come Sunday evening which would set them up nicely for a big home game against Manchester Magic on 27^th February.

As for the task in hand though, Crusaders head coach Scott Neely labelled this weekend “huge” for their play-off aspirations, and said that his side must look up to sides like Derby Trailblazers who defeated the Crusaders 95-74 at the Coventry Sports Centre last Saturday to prevent Crusaders from winning four home games in a row for the first time since 2005/6.

The month of January brought mixed fortunes for Taunton with two wins and two losses apiece. Prior to Christmas, Tigers notched two valuable away wins at Manchester and Tees Valley to put them back into the play-off mix after they had suffered three straight league defeats after beating Crusaders in their previous league meeting back in mid November. Taunton will be coming to the Sports Centre looking to get back to back away wins for the second time this season after beating London Leopards 68-72 last Sunday.

London Mets also boast an impressive 8-2 home record in the league, despite only playing their first home match of the New Year last weekend following a unfruitful run of just one win on their run of four straight away league games, which coincidentally came against Coventry in a 102-80 win in December.

“They’re huge games against Taunton and London Mets” said Neely, who is in his third year as Coventry boss. “Taunton Tigers and London Mets going to be right there battling in the play-off spots, so if we can take care of business here at home and then go down to London Met and steal a win down there, it’d be crucial to see us gain some momentum”.

As much as the Crusaders are looking up rather than down, if they lose to Taunton for the fourth time this season and don’t pick any points up down south the next day, it could also see them as much as six points adrift of eighth spot; and Neely is urging his side to avoid that by believing in themselves more this weekend.

“It’s really going to take us to be the aggressor and being more confident. When we played Derby they showed they were the number one team, they were more confident in knowing that they were the number one team”.

“Derby were smart in how they attacked and also know what they want to accomplish defensively, and for us that’s where we need to learn and grow to recognise our strengths and say ‘what do we have that we can grow to’ and right now there’s too many times where we lose focus offensively and defensively.

 “So we have to go in there with the fight saying that we’ve going into these two matches to make a push”.

Crusaders were without Ben Timms last Saturday due to academic commitments, but there are question marks over his fitness for this weekend due to a knee problem. On the subject of knee injuries, Crusaders received some positive news this week when Kane Hudson returned to training earlier than expected, but his chances for Saturday are rated at 50/50.

Crusaders team expected to face Taunton Tigers & London Mets: 

4 Joe Francombe (guard); 5 John Olinger (c) (guard); 7 Matt Smith (power forward),

10 Simon Payne (guard/forward); 11 Stephen Danso (guard); 12 Dave Edden (forward);

13 Ryann Samuel (forward); 14 Kane Hudson (forward) 15 Ben Timms (centre/forward);

55 Dan Taylor (guard/forward).

 

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