Bristol Flyers have taken full control of their British Basketball League (BBL) play-off tie against Manchester Giants after a 26-point blowout victory on the road.
The Flyers produced a dominant defensive display to shut down a team with the league’s number one rated offence, winning 97-71 on Thursday night at the National Basketball Performance Centre.
Andreas Kapoulas' side now has a commanding advantage in the two-game series ahead of the return leg in Bristol on Sunday, with the winner on aggregate points to advance into the last four of the competition.
Heading into the post-season after their best ever year in UK basketball’s elite division, the three-seeded Flyers showed every bit of the grit and grind they have built their reputation around the league on to produce a complete team performance.
Guard Tevin Olison shot the lights out, draining seven out of 10 attempts from three-point range, as he scored a game high 29 points in his first play-off game. Centre Malcolm Delpeche was huge in the paint on both ends of the floor, finishing with 16 points, nine rebounds, two steals and two blocks.
Season MVP candidate VJ King, who missed the last few weeks of the regular season through injury, made a huge impact coming off the bench with a smooth 15-point salvo. King and Great Britain international Jelani Watson-Gayle combined for 25 of the Flyers’ 31 bench points – outscoring Manchester’s replacements by 22.
This was a game in which every single player on Bristol’s roster stepped up to the occasion. Thomas Bell III put his body on the line in trademark style to produce an array of tough contested finishes at the rim. Corey Samuels typified the determination of this Flyers team, as he scrambled on the floor to regain possession for his side.
It could have been all so different after Bristol found themselves down by 12 points in the first quarter. The Flyers suffered a near five-minute drought in the opening frame, as early hot hand William Lee helped Manchester to a 14-point run.
In the last minute of the quarter King dug his team out of a hole with a huge individual run of seven points, including a big ‘and one’ three-point play, to cut the deficit to five.
The Flyers chipped away at the Giants' lead in a tight second, where the intensity of play-off basketball was on full display. Both teams struggled to find space on the wings for their shooters to get good looks from beyond the arc, where Manchester in particular are normally so lethal.
It speaks to the defensive effort the Flyers put in that Giants guard Dirk Williams, who leads the BBL in scoring this year, was limited to just seven points on the night. Olison produced one of the plays of the night when, despite conceding an obvious size difference, he stripped the ball from a rampaging Lee, ran down the other end, stopped on a dime and drained a three.
The Flyers went into the half stuck by just two points, after an unguarded Delpeche grabbed a telegraph inbound pass from Tajh Green right under the bucket to jam the ball home.
Bristol overturned the deficit in empathic style out of the break, exploding in the third quarter, which they won 10-28. They put together two 10-point runs during this period, with Olison making four of his triples along the way.
The ball was humming, with point guard and club captain Mike Miller showing his facilitation skills, ending the game with six assists. Arguably the play of the night came when some fantastic team ball movement found Olison on the wing. The American turned down the shot to make the extra bounce pass to an open King in the corner, who drained the three and the air from the building, with the home crowd stunned into silence.
The Flyers showed no mercy as they extended their lead in a fast and loose fourth quarter. Despite being up 23 points with three seconds on the game clock, head coach Andreas Kapoulas called a timeout to draw up one last play. He was duly rewarded, as Olison put the exclamation mark on the game with a floated three-pointer.
Speaking at the buzzer Olison said: “We came out and played really hard. I know we started off slow on the offensive end, but our defence kept us in the game, because they came out with a lot of energy. We knew they were going to do that, and we just wanted to match that.”
Kapoulas thought his team had started the game “nervously”, but he was “very proud” of their efforts overall. Despite the big lead they take back with them to SGS College Arena for the second leg, the head coach insisted “the job is not over”.
“This is just the first half, we have got to go back home on Sunday. [Manchester] have a lot of pride, I’m sure they are going to come down and they're going to be ready to play.”
