Now that the Telekom Baskets Bonn have also defeated series champion Alba Berlin, the dream of the first championship title should gain in intensity for the Baskets and their fans.
Up until Tuesday, Bonn had only won one of the previous ten duels against Alba Berlin – that was the 88:86 win in Berlin on the first matchday of last season. Otherwise, the albatrosses were always ahead in the basketball Bundesliga and in the cup.
Baskets Bonn conjure up when things get tight
In the current season, Bonn had already lost against Berlin in the round of 16 of the cup (95:98) and in the league on matchday 15 (76:81). That makes it all the more impressive what the 6,000 spectators saw on Wednesday evening when Bonn won 84:77 at home. At times, coach Tuomas Iisalo’s team played the champions of the past three years against the wall, and when things got tight again at the end, Bonn played magic in attack.
With the score of 75:71 for the home side, Tyson Ward initially blocked Maodo Lo from Berlin in his three-point attempt. TJ Shorts II from Bonn, who was once again the best with 20 points, played the long pass to Ward, who had gotten off to a good start, and the latter put it over the board for Javontae Hawkins, who sank the ball into the basket to make it 79:71. That was the preliminary decision 100 seconds before the end of the game.
Bonn takes over the top of the table
Coaches like to gasp when faced with such moves in regular games, but Iisalo is currently coaching a team in Bonn whose self-confidence could hardly be greater: “Tyson Ward’s alley-oop over the board wasn’t planned. I just thought: no, no, yes,” said the coach after the game.
Regardless of the renewed boost in self-confidence, the win against Alba puts Bonn in a very good starting position in the fight for the championship. They pushed Berlin off the top of the table and won the direct comparison. Since Bonn still has four games to play and Berlin only two, a lot would have to go wrong for Bonn to not finish first in the main round.
Baskets avoid Munich in the semifinals
Hardly anyone in Bonn would have believed that this could happen after 15 wins in a row. “We believe in ourselves, the fans believe in us too,” said Ward of Magenta-Sport, who is well aware that he would have been “in trouble” if his pass had gone wrong over the board.
But nothing is going wrong at Bonn at the moment. First place after the main round guarantees not only a continuous home right for decisive duels until the final, but also a supposedly easier opponent in the semifinals – if you survive the quarterfinals – in which Alba Berlin will probably have to deal with Bayern Munich. The Rhinelanders failed against Bayern Munich in the semi-finals last season.
Another title chance in the Champions League
After the trio of Bonn, Berlin and Munich, the league falls away. Fourth in the table from Oldenburg has already conceded twelve league slippers, Bonn just two. However, the national championship race is not the only chance for the title for the Baskets. In the Champions League, they have qualified for the Final Four (May 12-14 in Malaga), where they will face Spanish hosts Unicaja Malaga in the semi-finals. In this tournament, according to Iisalo, his team are only outsiders, but have already achieved historic things by participating for the first time.
Whether it will ultimately be enough for the first title after five national vice titles and three lost finals in the BBL Cup remains to be seen. But the chances for Bonn are better than they have been for a long time.
