The 23rd game day in the men’s National 2 was played this weekend.
League leader Gréngewald Hueschtert was not allowed to open the celebration bottles this weekend despite a 83:65 win against BC Mess. However, the team of coach Alex Pires now has the (official) promotion in its own hands next weekend, they just need one more victory or a loss by Zolwer or Bascharage with 5 remaining games. On Saturday, Janssed scored a game-high 32 points to lead the greens to a home victory.
Both followers of Gréngewald, Zolwer and Bascharage, were able to grab a win this weekend and stay on positions 2 and 3 with 38 points each. Zolwer won an absolute key game against 4th placed team Mondorf on Sunday, the final score was 89:85 in a hard fought game. Avanti Mondorf now trails the 3rd place in the National 2 ranking by 2 points and it will be extremely difficult to make another push to take over the 3rd place with 5 remaining games. Mondorf stormed back in the final quarter and even took the lead at some point but Zolwer escaped with a win to stay tied with Bascharage in the standings. A big bonus is the tie-breaker, Zolwer earns the direct comparison against Bascharage and if both teams would be tied after 28 games, Zolwer would finish second. Vic Heuschling scored 16 points and Zolwer had 4 players in double digits as the hosts overcame 67 combined points by Mondorf’s professional players Small and Ross.
The Hedgehogs Bascharage were able to beat Black Star 84:64 on the road. Ndiaye led the way for the guests with 21 points as Mersch still only had one professional player in action with league leading scorer Marquavias Gordon who finished with 31 points. Black Star is now last in the standings as Mamer has moved past the team from Mersch. Bascharage stays in a good position in the race for the second place but needs to win one more game than Zolwer over the next games.
Lastly, a spectacular game was played in Mamer where the hosts won 121:115 after overtime against the visiting Kordall Steelers. A total of 30 points were scored alone in overtime (18:12 for Mamer). McDaniel hit 10 shots from behind the arc and finished with a game-high 39 points, Bedhiranoglu added 31 points and Patrick Hoffmann, the leading JICL scorer of the league, scored 25 points. He was not the main JICL scorer of the game as Max Schmit of the guests scored 30 points in this game while Hobbs (36) and Causwell (35) had high scoring games as well.
The newest standings:
1. Gréngewald 20:3 – 43 points
2. Zolwer 15:8 – 38 points
3. Bascharage 15:8 – 38 points
4. Mondorf 13:10 – 36 points
5. Kordall 11:12 – 34 points
6. BC Mess 9:14 – 32 points
7. Mamer 5:18 – 28 points
8. Black Star 4:19 – 27 points
