One round has been played in the men’s LBBL, all teams have faced each other once while 10 game days have been played in the women’s LBBL. It is a good moment to take a look at the main takeaways at this point of the season.
Women make the headlines
Over the last 2 months, women basketball was making most of the headlines in Luxembourg. Next to the LBBL, the participation in the EuroCup by Gréngewald Hueschtert and T71 Dudelange was an ongoing subject in the press. Furthermore, our national team was in action in November and showed 2 strong games, one at home in a loss against Slovakia and lastly with a win in Switzerland last Sunday ( –> Luxembourg beats Switzerland 81:43 (video highlights) )
4 leaders – 5 contenders
The standings in the men’s LBBL show an exceptional situation: 4 teams are on top of the stadings with the same record (9:2) after 11 games. Etzella Ettelbruck, T71 Dudelange, Basket Esch and Amicale Steinsel. One point behind the quartett, Résidence Walfer (8:3) is the only other team with a winning record after the first round. Arantia and AB Contern already have a losing record at places 6-7. After the first round of the season, the top 5 teams can be considered the main contenders for the championship title. But as last year’s play-offs have shown, the starting position to enter a play-off-series does not guarantee an advancement to the next round.
Avoiding the play-down is a main goal
The main goal before each season for most teams is to enter the play-offs and avoid the play-down. While Zolwer and Heffingen (both 1:10 record) will already have a very hard challenge to compete for place 8 in the standings, it looks like 5 teams (Arantia, Contern, Gréngewald, Sparta, Musel Pikes) are in the mix to fight for 3 spots in the play-offs. The teams that will miss the top 8 will face a difficult play-down where every game is extremely challenging and important. 2 teams will relegate immediately, while another team will play a relegation-series against the third best team from the National 2, not an easy task. Over the next weeks and months, the direct comparisons will once again become very important as they might decide the final ranking of a team in the standings after the regular season.
T71 remains clear favorite in the women’s league
The standings in the women’s LBBL are incomplete because teams have played between 7 and 10 games which makes it more difficult to analyze the actual strength of the teams. However, champion T71 Dudelange is the only unbeaten team and can be considered the clear favorite to repeat. Most of the time, the team of coach Jérôme Altmann is playing with 4 Luxembourgish players in the starting 5 and is unbeaten (7:0) so far, winning games by an average of nearly 26 points.
Fight against relegation
With the new game mode, at least one team will relegate to the National 2 in order to reduce the LBBL to 10 teams in the upcoming season. The 3 bottom teams will play against the two best team from the second league in a 5-team-group. At this moment, Zolwer is the team that is in danger the most, the team has not won a game so far and lost games by an average of nearly 37 points. However, it is also possible, but rather unlikely, that 3 teams from the LBBL will relegate and 2 teams from the second league will promote.
Home court advantage?
In the men’s LBBL, 32 games were won by the home team while 34 were won by the road team. This is a trend that already showed up over the last years when nearly half of the games were won by the road teams. In the women’s LBBL, 26 games were won by the home team compared to 20 wins by the road team.
Stats leaders
Top scorers (JICL, women)
Nadia Mossong – 17.4 ppg
Catherine Mreches – 15.0
Faith Ehi Etute – 15.0
Esmeralda Skrijelj – 12.9
Charlie Bidinger – 12.6
Top scorers (NON JICL, women)
Jaiamoni Welch-Coleman – 28.9 ppg
Kierra Anthony – 27.6
Mikayla Fernez – 26.4
Amanda Cahill – 25.2
Tatsiana Likhtarovich – 24.3
Top rebounders (all players, women)
Isis Lane – 17.2
Bridget Yoerger – 14.3
Esmeralda Skrijelj – 13.9
Faith Ehi Etute – 11.6
Shalonda Winton – 10.0
Top passers (all players, women)
Tatsiana Likhtarovich – 6.3 apg
Jaiamoni Welch-Coleman – 5.3
Samantha Logic – 5.3
Amanda Cahill – 5.0
Kierra Anthony – 4.7
Top scorers (JICL, men)
Philippe Gutenkauf – 18.9 ppg
Mike Feipel – 15.8
Malcolm Kreps – 15.1
Oliver Vujakovic – 14.9
Jonas Theisen – 14.7
Top scorers (NON JICL, men)
Criston Mallory – 28.0 ppg
Grant Dressler – 28.0
Tyler Cartaino – 26.0
JR Foreman – 25.4
Marquill Smith – 25.1
Top rebounders (all players, men)
Cameron Gregory – 13.4 rpg
Steven Julian – 12.5
Criston Mallory – 12.0
Moses Greenwood – 11.8
Alex Reese – 11.6
Top passers (all players, men)
Philippe Gutenkauf – 6.3 apg
Bob Melcher – 6.3
Grant Dressler – 5.7
Gilles Weis – 5.7
Trevion Crews – 5.7
Résidence-teams score the most points
In both the women’s and the men’s league, Résidence Walfer is the highest scoring team with 97 points per game (men) and 83 points per game (women). The men’s team of coach Alexis Kreps is also taking the most 3-pointers per game with 32.2 attempts (The Musel Pikes rank last among men’s teams in 3-pointers attempted with 18 per game).
