Game two group play

We are now 2-0 in group play! We had a big home game (our first) here in Newcastle today against a very good team from Macedonia. Playing before a good crowd of over 3,000 we gave them a game to remember. We jumped out to a nice 11 point led in the first quarter with some good fast break basketball and some flying dunks by Pops Mensah-Bonsu! We tripped up a little at the end of the second quarter but still had a solid 4 point lead going in at halftime. the second half was a wild ride with both teams going on runs and the lead changing leads over and over. With the game looking like it might be out of reach, with less then two minutes left and being down by seven points some crazy things happened. We got what turned out to be a 5 point turn around when a player macedonia fouled Dan Clark intentionally. He made both free throws and we got the ball out of bounds. We ran a misdirection play and knocked down a open 3pt shot to pull within two points. With 6 seconds left in the game we were down by 3 points with two free throws to shoot. Pops missed the first free throw then intentionally missed the second free throw, Dan Clark tipped the ball back to Luol Deng who calmly swished a 3pt shot to tie the game! We got a big defensive stop in the last 5 seconds of the game to send it into overtime. Once in overtime with momentum and a very loud crowd on our side we took over in the 5 minute overtime period and out scored them 17-9 and came away with a spectacular 104-96 home win!

Great team win with a lot of players stepping up. Our big two Mensah-Bonsu and Deng had 27 and 23 points. Now it is on to Bosnia to play game 3 in group play Wed.