British Wheelchair Basketball

Mixed fortunes for Great Britain’s Wheelchair Basketball Teams on Opening Day

Mixed fortunes for Great Britain’s Wheelchair Basketball Teams on Opening Day

The World Wheelchair Basketball Championships today opened with a spectacular opening ceremony followed by two exhilarating games of basketball.

Great Britain’s women opened the 2010 World Wheelchair Basketball Championships with a thrilling game against The Netherlands at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham.

Following the opening ceremony, the two teams entertained the crowd with a match that was just narrowly won by The Netherlands. The two evenly matched sides were close all the way through although GB edged the first half. A three point lead for GB at the end of the first quarter was extended to five points at half time with Helen Freeman and Clare Strange starring.

In the second half, the Dutch came back into it and by the end of the third quarter the scores were tied at 32 – 32. Cher Korver and Mariska Beijer performed well for The Netherlands and a nail biting final quarter saw the two teams keeping within one point of each other. As the minutes counted down, The Netherlands managed to pull away and in an exciting finale, the Dutch held on for a 39 – 38 victory.

Korver ended the game as top scorer with 14 points while Helen Freeman notched up 13 with strong points contributions from Strange and Louise Sugden for GB and Beijer for The Netherlands.

Despite the defeat, the GB team can take a lot of positives from the performance and should go into the next game tomorrow against Canada in high spirits and a lot of confidence.

Great Britain’s men started their tournament with an impressive win over South Korea in the second game of the day.

The Beijing Paralympic bronze medallists were looking to make home advantage count and gave an excellent performance to see off a relatively unknown but spirited South Korea side. GB were in control from the start as they race into a 24 – 10 lead at the end of the first period, a lead that increased to 47 – 20 at half time. A fine performance from guard Jon Pollock aided GB’s superiority as the game as a contest was as good as over.

Coach Murray Treseder made full use of his bench to ensure that the squad got some all important minutes ahead of the rest of the tournament with Daniel Highcock contributing nine points to the GB score.

South Korea rallied in the second half but couldn’t stop the relentless GB offence as the score at the end of the third period was 71 – 32. Seung –hy un Cho starred for the Koreans with an impressive 19 points, finishing the game as top scorer and Dong-hy eon Kim also performed well with an 11 point haul.

Jon Pollock and Ian Sagar finished as GB's top scorers with 16 and 14 points respectively as GB ran out 87 – 43 winners.

Great Britain Women will take on a strong Canadians women team in the morning (Thursday 8th July) whilst the men take on another Asian team in the form of Japan at 18.30 tomorrow evening.