Hornets: 68

Oxford Phoenix: 85

Hornets pay the price for sloppy fouls and lose to Oxford Phoenix

The Hornets gave Janet Lea the scorer at Holmes Chapel a headache in the first quarter by committing so many fouls and giving away so many free throws she ran out of scoresheet allowed for Q1. Oxford had 17 free throws in the quarter and the Hornets only stayed in the game with some excellent offensive play themselves.Sam Bithell and Sam Barnard got the scoring going and when Andy Rushton landed a well worked jumpshot after 5 minutes the hornets were up by 3 points. But the Hornets had already committed 4 team fouls and now made a series of sloppy fouls to hand the lead over from the charity strip. Despite excellent baskets from Guy Johnson and Andy Sienkiewicz and a trade mark 3 pointer from Tom Lee the Hornets had made it too easy for Oxford who now lead by 6.

q2 turned into a much tighter affair both defences locking, Tush and Kris scored but a number of shots were missed from the hornets with the rebounders not finding a way around the blocking out from Phoenix. John Whelan attacked from the Low post to score but the hornets still lost the quarter and were 9 points down at half time.

Hornets raced out of the second half and cool passing at this stage allowed Tom to show off his shooting skills. This along with excellent close work from John and Barney pulled the deficit down to just 2 points. The Hornets had switched to a zone defence at the start of the half and this had kept the Oxford inside game quiet but now they showed they can score big shots too landing 3 excellent 3 pointers to again open the gap. John Whelan slipped an excellent pass to Jake Coventry to finish coolly but the Hornets were still down by 9 with one quarter left.

Tom, Kris and Tush all showed off their shooting skills early in the quarter and Kris finished one ring high for the hornets to take the lead 3 minutes into the quarter. At this stage it was felt that the Hornets must win against a tiring Oxford team, but no one had shown them the script and they again hit back with excellent outside shooting. The Hornets fell back into giving silly fouls and Oxford kept pilling on the pressure from the free throw line. Hornets were hurrying their offence to try to catch up but in the end Oxford ran out comfortable winners.

Top Scorer: - Tush - 15 points

Best Player: - Guy - chased everything, rebounded at both ends and landed jump shots.

Best Basket: - Sublime assist from Neil on the point for Barney to finish close in.

Must Improve: - Silly fouls - we gave them 49 visits to the line!