Fine performance reflected in result

IT’S been a frustrating couple of weeks for Cheshire Phoenix. Despite turning in good displays against Manchester Basketball and Leicester Riders, they came away from both road trips with nothing to show from solid performances, coming up short.

- BY MARK TIMPERTLEY

However, in their penultimate game in the regulation season away at Bristol Flyers on Friday night, they turned the recent ‘L's’ into a ‘W’ with a fine all around team performance taking it 81-93.

In another upturn of fortune, RJ Eytle-Rock was pronounced fit to play some part after missing the last month with a hamstring injury.

The last time these two teams met, back at the beginning of February at EPSV, it ended in humiliation for the Phoenix, when the Flyers ran out 94-122 winners, having leapt out to a 0-22 lead and just over five and a half minutes of the game elapsed before the Nix registered their first points.

With this still fresh in the minds of all associated with the Phoenix, thoughts must have been ‘surely not again’?! As the Flyers raced out into another early lead, with the first three scores of the game (7-0) with just over two minutes gone.

But TJ Atwood and Nick Timberlake eased those fears and got the Nix scoreboard moving with back-to-back baskets as the game started to take shape (7-4).

Points were traded with the hosts maintaining their advantage until a Timberlake triple tied things up at 11 points apiece.

Larry Austin Jnr scored to give the Nix their first lead of the game (11-13) and followed that up with a three-point play to take it out another point at 13-16.

A Leslee Smith dunk brought the hosts back to within a point, before a smart piece of play by Tyreek Scott-Grayson, fabulously improvising a tip-in from an unusually short three-point attempt from Skipper Skyler White, made it a three-point lead again (15-18).