Glasgow Rocks secured a fifth successive British Basketball League victory last night as their resurgence continued at Manchester's Wright Robinson College.
Donald Robinson scored a game-high 25 points as the visitors produced a decisive third-quarter surge after grinding out a 38-36 half-time lead. But Glasgow had to withstand a late rally from Manchester before escaping with the win.
The Rocks face Leicester Riders tomorrow at the Emirates Arena with Mike Ringgold, their recent signing, vowing to repay coach Sterling Davis for dragging him off the dole queue and back into basketball.
The American centre, who had an abortive spell in Iceland last term, ended a ten-month stint out of the game when he landed in Glasgow last month and he plans to take out his frustrations on the rest of the BBL. "There's nothing I love doing more," he said. "It's made me appreciate this opportunity because so many of my friends were away overseas playing and I was sitting at home. I had to wait on the work visa for a month and I was feeling anxious. I kept calling Sterling but I had to learn to be patient. But now I really want to pay him back for waiting for me."
Title-chasing Leicester are likely to test the Rocks' hopes of making a run towards the top of the table but Ringgold believes he can help offset the loss of Kieron Achara, the Great Britain internationalist. "This is an opportunity for me," he said. "I can only control what I can do which is play defence and play hard. If I do that, we should be fine."
Elsewhere Newcastle Eagles booked their place in the BBL Cup final after being given a real scare at home by Plymouth Raiders. They were forced into overtime as the Raiders wiped out a 17-point first-leg deficit in Newcastle. Eagles eventually lost 91-83 but it was enough to secure their passage into the final in Birmingham next month. Leicester Riders are their probable opponents after they thrashed Sheffield Sharks 90-70 in the first leg of their semi-final.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article