Impressive start sets Titans girls up for a comfortable win

Titans opened up with confidence and went on a 13-0 scoring run in the first seven minutes.

Youngsters Macey Huskin and Alex Bird both produced good performances as Titans held a 44-15 lead at half-time.

And they continued their strong play in the second half with Abi Smith and Charly Stalker showing leadership for their young team-mates.

Imogene Williams led the scoring with 25 points while support came from by Smith (20), Alex Bello (11) and Stalker (9).

Titans Purple suffered a 90-63 home defeat at the hands of Oxford Hoops in the U14 Midlands West Regional League.

There were positives to take from the loss but Oxford’s height advantage combined with poor boxing out by Titans gave the visitors too many easy looks at the basket.

Some unusual refereeing in the final period enabled Titans to slow Oxford’s scoring rate right down, limiting them to just 12 points when they had scored over 20 in the other three quarters. Strong drives to the basket earned Ethan Round, Rayaan Khalid and Ethan Mead double-figure points, scoring 15, 12 and 11 respectively.

Titans under-12 boys secured another two wins when they travelled to Leicester to play Leicester Riders and Coventry Tornadoes.

The young Titans were dominant in their first encounter against Riders, winning the first quarter 17-2 before going on to take a 46-27 success.

And it was a similar pattern against Tornadoes with Titans doing their damage early in their 50-30 win.

With their 6-0 record for the season, Titans remain at the top of the table, but will face a tough test when they take on City of Birmingham and local rivals Northants Thunder this weekend.

Three of Titans’ under-16 girls took their Level 1 Referee Course over last weekend and passed with flying colours.

The course, offered by Northamptonshire County Basketball, was a great opportunity for the girls, along with others, to expand their basketball knowledge and now gives them the chance to gain referee experience at local and National League games.

Anyone interested in joining either the girls or boys programmes at Titans can email to [email protected] or visit the Facebook page @nebctitans or website www.nebctitans.co.uk

Kettering Phoenix claimed a 59-39 victory over Tile Hill Trojans in the Leicestershire & Rutland League’s Women’s Division.

Tara Hings led the scoring with 10 points for Phoenix.

The men’s B team, the Suns, were 77-58 winners at Hinckley B in Division Four with Sam Montgomery (16) and Andrew Alleyne (15) leading the way.

And there was also a win for the C team - the Tropics - as they beat Fullhurst B 84-61, also in Division Four.

Montgomery also featured for them and scored 15 points but it was Erlen Ters who led the way with 23.

Phoenix were involved in the Under-13 Northants Tournament and they started with a 14-12 defeat to NEBC Titans with Sebastian Juanta scoring 10 points for the Kettering team.

They then lost 14-2 to Duston Hawks before drawing 4-4 with Northampton Adders.

The club also had two teams competing in the Under-15 Northants Tournament.

Phoenix A lost 10-6 to Northampton Condas and then drew 4-4 with MK Speeders.

The B team had an almost identical record as they went down 12-4 to Condas and then drew 4-4 with Speeders.

And it was the B side who triumphed by a 14-6 scoreline when the two Phoenix teams met in their final match of the tournament.

A fourth-quarter slump hurt Thunders’ Cadet Boys when they took on Worcester Wolves in the Boys National League Midlands West Conference.

They trailed by just seven going into the last session but ended up being beaten 66-47 as they were outscored 19-7 over the final 10 minutes.

In the harsh 19-point defeat, Demantas Cebatoriunas led Thunder’s scoring with 16.

The chance of the senior men reaching the end-of-season play-offs got a boost despite not having a game.

City of Birmingham Rockets, who started the weekend joint-top of the Midlands Conference, lost to Warwickshire Hawks and Charnwood College Riders.

A 21-point haul allied to 12 rebounds from Poppy Barnett saw the Northants Cadette girls record an important ‘road’ win against a much-improved City of Leeds team in Under-16 Girls National League North Conference.

A comfortable win looked to be on the cards at half-time with Lightning holding a 27-16 lead.

But Leeds battled back in the third period to close the gap to 39-35 going into the final 10 minutes.

The girls showed great composure, though, to take the final quarter 24-15 and run out winners by 63-50.

In addition to Barnett’s effort Lucy Need ham and Dina Kosnikovsak also made important contributions with 15 and 14 points respectively.

The win moves Lightning up to third in the Conference table.

Free-throw nightmares saw the Under-14 Boys slip to defeat 50-46 against City of Birmingham Rockets II in Boys National League Midlands West Conference.

The boys missed an unbelievable 29 shots from the ‘charity stripe’ and slipped to a four-point defeat.

Thunder had beaten Rockets on two occasions this season but this made little difference to the final result because of Thunder’s inability to convert the free throws.

The game was a low scoring affair dominated by defence with Tom Greenfield (11) topping the scoring.