The Luxembourg Basketball League LBBL is back. This weekend, the first game day of the 2022/23 season is on the schedule.
The first game in the men’s league will tip-off at 18:30 when Résidence hosts Heffingen. With new players on both sides, this will be a first test how strong both teams can be this season. While Walferdange has been named as one of the favorites before the season, Heffingen went under the radar despite their acquisitions of Tom Schomer and Philippe Arendt. Coach Tom Kries and his team could surprise the league by grabbing a road victory to start the season.
Champion Amicale Steinsel will start the season at homeon Saturday when they welcome newcomer Gréngewald. It will be the first LBBL game for Scott Morton, Tremell Murphy and Alex Reese in their new uniform. They enter this game as the favorite, but should be aware that Gréngewald is a very balanced team that can become very dangerous when they hit shots from outside as they have shown last season when they dominated the second league.
The Musel Pikes will face a difficult challenge at home against vice-champion T71. Andjelkovic wil make his debut for Dudelange while coach Defraigne will coach his first game in the LBBL. Pol Goebel and Gilles Kerschen, new arrivals of the Pikes, will be needed to compensate the injury of Jean Kox. The Musel Pikes definitely do not want to start the season as poorly as last season.
Arantia Larochette has had success over the last two seasons. The team of head coach Christophe Ney will host one of the LBBL favorites Basket Esch on Saturday. Thomas Grün will make his debut for Esch while the core of the team stayed together this summer. Will the team from Esch show their full strenght already in this first game of the season? Both teams met in the cup final last season where Esch had the better end.
Sparta Bertrange has played an extraordinary regular season last year. Head coach Chris Wulff will enter another season with the team as they start with a home game against newcomer Zolwer. Both teams have new professional players. The guests from Zolwer are happy to be back in the first league and have the opportunity to start with a big surprise.
On Sunday, Etzella will face Contern to complete the game day. It has been quiet in Ettelbruck in the off-season, no key JICL players joined or left the team of new coach Gavin Love. A new coach is also sitting on the bench of the guests with Gabor Boro. A big question will be how Contern can replace Andjelkovic and Mantz. Can Aziz Ndiaye show the same impact that he had in the National 2?
In the women’s league, the Musel Pikes tip off the season at 18:00 against Wiltz. Without Cathy Schmit, Laure Diederich and Bridget Yoerger, the team of coach Louis Wennig will look a bit different in the future. A lot of changes happened in Wiltz this off-season so that it will be interesting to see if the team can compete on the road.
With new professional players and Laetitia Schumacher as new players, Amicale Steinsel wants to play a big role in the championship this season. They face a very difficult challenge against the visiting team Gréngewald. New coach Francois Manti will try to start the season with a road victory as Samantha Logic will make her return to the LBBL.
With their new trio Martha Burse, Bridget Yoerger and Jovana Jaksic, Sparta wil try to make some noise this season. The team from Bertrange will host Zolwer, one of the underdogs in the league to start the season.
The top game will be played in Walferdange between Résidence and champion T71. Both teams were able to win a title last season, T71 managed to grab the Supercup title against the same opponent last week and now they will fight for two points on game day 1. The team from Dudelange will be in three competitions this season as they will play in the women’s EuroCup and have a minimum of 6 international games.
On Sunday, Etzella will host Contern to complete the game day. Several new players will be active on each side, but the coaches (Zoric for Etzella / Fuger for Contern) remained the same in both clubs. The guests from Contern enter this game as the favorite.
Basket Esch does not play this weekend.
In the men’s National 2, Mondorf and Black Star will already tip off the season on Friday evening. the promoted team from Schieren and Wiltz will meet each other head to head on Saturday.
