Of course Joshua Obiesie is right when he says – as he did later on Saturday evening -: “Nobody is happy if they lose by 40 points, that’s clear. But that can happen in basketball. We are young and that happens sometimes good teams. ” Well, really good teams probably less often, and even average teams like s.Oliver Würzburg, who has always settled in the secure midfield of the Bundesliga in recent years, do not receive such a severe defeat very often. But on Saturday at EWE Baskets Oldenburg it was that time again: The 84: 124 (41:64) swatter in Lower Saxony was the second highest defeat in the club’s Bundesliga history (the highest was a 54:95 in the first play-off -Quarter-finals on May 8, 2016 with the then defending champion Bamberg).
It would be a nice hard task for an ambitious archivist to find out whether the baskets have ever received 124 points. Ultimately, it turned out to be an NBA result, although the Oldenburg team, the strongest offensive team in the class, have eight minutes less playing time than the teams in the world’s strongest league, where the quarters last twelve minutes and not ten as in Europe . In any case, no Bundesliga team has shown such a hunger for basketball this season and scored so many points in one game. It was the fourth time in their 15 games of this round that the Lower Saxony, who even won against Chemnitz with 46 points difference (119: 73) and celebrated their ninth success in a row, scored 100 or more points.
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Even if Baskets trainer Denis Wucherer says that “in the end it doesn’t matter whether you lose at 20 or at 40” – that the frustration after such a humiliation can at least sit a little deeper immediately afterwards, one could guess at the latest when you saw how captain Felix Hoffmann and builder Cameron Hunt clearly had an urgent need for discussion right after the game. And that still satisfied on the floor. The 31-year-old veteran spoke very emphatically to the 23-year-old talent. If one observes his resigned-looking body language and certainly expandable zeal towards the end of the game, one can very well imagine that Hoffmann did not like it that much. The captain has earned the reputation of being committed to the last drop of sweat – even when the lungs are empty and the situation is hopeless. And to hang your head and surrender defenselessly is an absolute horror to Hoffmann.
“In games like this, too,” said Wucherer late on Saturday evening, “it’s about playing to the end and using every minute to get better.” He had sworn nothing good in advance, and at least secretly all the people who were friendly to the Baskets had to fear such a small debacle. It wasn’t really about a realistic chance of winning, but basically just the amount of defeat. “We had to expect that it would be very difficult for us with the current line-up against a good team like Oldenburg,” said Wucherer after the biggest defeat in his term in Würzburg (that was the 29-point difference-61 to date: 90 home defeat against the Hamburg Towers on the last Sunday of the Dead, November 22nd, 2020): “Oldenburg is simply too deep, too big, too experienced, too good and, above all, too rested. They play for the semifinals,” he believes Baskets trainer. Well, and with these conditions “it can be such a high result, especially if your strong throwers hit as well as they do today”.
Keith Hornsby, son of US musician Bruce Hornsby, three-time Grammy winner, who achieved world fame in the eighties with his band The Range (“The Way It Is”), stood out among the hosts. His Filius made 31 points on his 29th birthday, more than ever in the league, where he sank an impressive eight of his ten three-way attempts. Hornsby scored more points than Würzburg’s two most accurate shooters, Jonas Weitzel (16) and Obiesie (13).
Although the duel between Lower Franconia in Lower Saxony might not have been quite as one-dimensional, but certainly also quite one-sided, the Würzburg would not have to do without their three top performers Zach Smith (shoulder), Justin Sears (cruciate ligament) and Brekkott Chapman (Achilles tendon) due to injury. “Today or last week in Berlin were not the standards. We have to see that we are competitive after the next game,” said Wucherer, who is also against Bayern Munich, which is currently causing a stir in the Euroleague, on Wednesday (8.30pm) ) again nothing good swings. “We have to somehow survive and keep learning.”
The first hopes of the baskets are now resting on the former NBA professional Perry Jones III, who signed up on Friday, but due to the (league) regulations and the two prescribed corona tests, he will probably not be able to make his debut against Göttingen until next Saturday at the earliest . At least until then, what Obiesie said on Saturday will apply: “We have to try to have energy to survive against Bayern Munich.” The 20-year-old, who set a personal record in the league with 13 points in Oldenburg, has apparently found his again. After some of the most honest appearances in the course of this round with unhappy or unsavory appearances, the native of Munich now uses his minutes on the floor for more passionate and combative performances. Obiesie finally made the impression that he was somehow going about his work a little more relaxed and carefree.
Maybe not the wrong approach in the current situation – even for the baskets.
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