Worthing Thunder 115 Thames Valley Cavaliers 131

Worthing Thunder 115 Thames Valley Cavaliers 131

Saturday 1 February 2020

Basketball England National League Division One

Worthing Thunder suffered a heavy defeat 131 – 115 at Worthing Leisure Centre at the hands of visiting Thames Valley Cavaliers in a high scoring game.

Missing injured Zaire Taylor, the sides seemed to be evenly matched during the first five minutes of the first quarter with the teams tied at 16 a-piece. However a 15-2 run by the Cavaliers opened a 13 point margin (31-18) and a further run of 8-2 saw the visitors storm into a 16 point lead (41-25) as the buzzer for the end of the first period sounded. The opening three minutes of the second stanza started much the same as the early part of the first period with both sides trading baskets and Thunder not slipping too much further behind.

Once again however it was the visitors who took the initiative hitting 17-0 run preventing Thunder from adding to their points total for more than four minutes extending their lead to 28 points (60-32). The first half ended with Cavaliers returning to the locker room with a commanding 25 point lead.

Thunder were always going to find it difficult to rescue the match from such a deficit and whilst their performance improved markedly in the second half of the match winning both the third and fourth periods 35-31 and 34-29 respectively, Cavaliers were always in control and never allowed the home side any real chance of overturning their lead.

For the visitors Taylor Johnson had an outstanding match notching up a “triple double” of 35 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists. The visitors hit a highly creditable 63% of all their field goal attempts compared to that of 48% by the home side. For Thunder the ever-reliable Alex Owumi top scored with 36 points.

Thunder scorers:- Alex Owumi (36 points); Cameron Hildreth (28 points); Dominic Ives and AJ Basi (14 points); Tom Ward (11 points); Ishmael Fontaine (7 points); Nick Ballone (3 points); J. Goddard (2 points)