It is unlikely that Bayreuth’s basketball coach Raoul Korner remembered the former national soccer player Rolf Rüssmann on Saturday, but he expressed himself a bit similar to his most famous quote. “If we don’t win here, we’ll at least break their turf,” Rüssmann once suggested before a game against Dortmund, while Korner said after an 89:87 victory in Heidelberg: “If you don’t play well, then at least hard! ” His team did that in the third quarter, in which it initially “started to slump”, but then bit its way back into the game.
After a balanced first half, in which the hosts did not meet and the guests barely managed to get hold of rebounding balls, the Bayreuthers were behind with eleven points shortly before the end of the third quarter, 58:69. They gave 23 offensive rebounds in this game. In the final section, however, they managed a 13-0 run to 85:78. In addition to Cameron Wells, Martynas Sajus and Kevin Wohlrath, who had already played well recently, Terry Allen also impressed with 16 points. In the end, with a bit of luck, that was enough to win Bayreuth’s second win of the season.
Coach Denis Wucherer would probably have given a lot if his team had felt the urge to at least scratch the floor for their opponents, but his Würzburg team remained unsuccessful in the fourth away game of the season. In the 79:87 defeat in Bonn they were behind from the start and were not evenly matched, especially in the second and third sections. Only in the first and last quarter did they fight back, said Wucherer. The Lower Franconians also managed a 10-0 interim sprint, which did not bring them into the lead, but only briefly within reach of the hosts with 78:81. “We weren’t ready and threw the ball away too often,” said captain Felix Hofmann later, “we lost twelve balls in the first half that really hurt us.”
On Sunday Brose Bamberg then managed to win the favorites and thus returned to the road to success, after the team had previously said goodbye to the top of the table after defeats against Berlin (89: 101) and Braunschweig (84:90). However, it was also hard work for the bottom of the table, Frankfurt, who had recently surprised with a win against Ulm. Bamberg ultimately prevailed 77:72 (45:34).