St. Clare's 40, Woodgreen Witney 36

Congratulation to the boys' basketball team who secured their first victory in the Oxfordshire School's league. Coach Franky Marulanda tells the story;

The key to the victory was tough defensive play together with smart and disciplined offensive play. St. Clare's took a very early lead going 8-0 and from there on our boys had the lead to the end of the game. At one point they were 11 points up, but that was short lived as Woodgreen scored a 3 to bring the lead back to single figures.

Woodgreen had no answers for Hao, Ivan or Jan Philip and when they linked together using the 1-4 offensive set it was impossible for Woodgreen to truly contest their movements. It was just a question of putting the ball through the hoop rather than being stopped. Every player had a strong defensive game, which shows in the score-line but it was good to see Hao finally taking a leading role for the team as well as Emilis actually coming out of his shell and showing that he can make great contributions to the team without having to score.

The team and scorers were;
Hao Ni; (14 pts)
Jan Philip Mertens (10 pts)
Lukasz Koprowski (0 pts)
Michal Wisniewski (4 pts)
Ivan Kotchetkov (12 pts)
Emilis Romaskevicius (0 pts)

January