Baskets coach Steven Esterkamp doesn’t help such cross-comparisons either: “This is a new, completely different game. Trier has a good team and plays a very strong defense. As in Hagen, our team play will be the key to success. ”However, the Gladiators are also a team that is feeling quite clearly the consequences that the corona pandemic has on the schedule of the 2nd Bundesliga. The appearance in Paderborn is the fourth game in eleven days for the team around the former baskets pointguard Chase Adams. The removal in Hagen was followed four days later by a 75:70 win in Jena and on Wednesday a 68:77 home defeat against Bayer Giants Leverkusen.
Trier is eighth (3/3) with the now even balance and is where the Uni Baskets (3/4) want to go at least – in the last place that still entitles to play-off participation, provided the final round is on schedule should go through the stage. “Nobody can know how the season is going, but our great hope is that spectators will be allowed back in for the play-offs at the latest and then we really want to be there,” says captain Ivan Buntic. In the preseason, the Uni Baskets were known to be a brilliant sixth when Corona came and ruined the dream of the first play-off entry after eight long years.
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Badu Buck (right), who has a lot of fun here with assistant trainer Nino Garris, is missing from the Baskets against Trier.
Photo: Elmar Neumann
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What was very frustrating at the time is now a motivation. Buntic is correspondingly critical of the previous yield. Above all, the two wafer-thin defeats in Schwenningen (78:79) and Tübingen (101: 103) are annoying. “It definitely could or should have been more than three victories for us. We even had a chance against Rostock. But that cannot be changed now and so we only have to do everything we can to actually prevent further avoidable defeats. I don’t even want to think about it if a game like the one in Schwenningen or Tübingen should cost us a play-off at the end, “says Buntic.
The team’s dream is also the coach’s dream. Esterkamp also likes nothing better than duping the big favorites with his team in a seething hell of maspern, as was the case last on March 6th in the spectacular victory against Master Niners Chemnitz (92:91). When such basketball festivals can be celebrated again is extremely uncertain these days, but if the game can be played in a full hall again at some point, the starting position of the baskets should be as promising as possible: “We remain optimistic and do everything we can to ensure that in order to have the chance of a play-off spot right up to the end ”, says Esterkamp and yet remains true to his tactics. That means looking from game to game and in this case concentrating on Trier. While the gladiators miss their captain Jermaine Bucknor (hip surgery) and the use of the newly signed Jonathan Dubas (hand injury) is questionable, Esterkamp has the same squad available as during the victory in Hagen. Tom Alte (broken metacarpus) will not play again until next year, Badu Buck (torn hamstring) next week.
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