Bristol Flyers’ head coach Andreas Kapoulas has refused to use a mounting injury list and a tight schedule as excuses as the team slipped to their first consecutive losses in the British Basketball League (BBL) this season.
The short-handed Flyers came up short despite a spirited effort for three quarters away to Leicester Riders on Friday night, 91-73, with the defending champions exacting revenge for Bristol’s recent victory over them at SGS College Arena.
They followed it with what coach Kapoulas described as a “disappointing” double-digit defeat, 93-71 to Caledonia Gladiators on Saturday, surrendering their unbeaten home record.
Going into the back-to-back games Bristol were missing two starters in point guard Michael Miller and forward Thomas Bell III, who both entered the club’s concussion protocol, following a bruising overtime victory over Cheshire Phoenix the previous weekend.
While Bell III - named in the league-wide team of the week after his 27-point haul against Cheshire - progressed through the six-stage protocol in time to face the Gladiators, he sustained a hip injury in the opening two minutes and didn’t take to the floor again.
In their absence forward VJ King and guard Tevin Olison picked up a lot of the heavy lifting on offence over the two games. Olison impressed with 18 points against Leicester - including two long distance ‘bomb’ threes and a big block - after returning from an injury sustained after trapping his finger in a door.
American King scored 24 points and grabbed 12 rebounds against Leicester and was 21 and 8 against the Gladiators. There were bigger roles as well for bench pieces Corey Samuels, Jelani Watson-Gayle and Leslee Smith.
The scoreboard was arguably not a fair reflection of the team’s hustle over the entire match against Leicester - who were led by an inspired 34-point performance by former NBA G-League player Marc Loving. However, Kapoulas acknowledged the Flyers put in a “sloppy” performance against Caledonia.
After a tight opening half the Scottish side led by a single point, 38-39. Coming out of the break The Flyers’ offence ran completely cold, with the team only posting 13 points during the third quarter - which they lost by a margin of 20.
A blockbuster denial from King, who chased down Jeremiah Bailey before powerfully swatting the ball and Gladiators player away, was the only cause for Flyers fans to cheer in a torrid third term.
The Flyers, normally lethal in transition from defence to offence, only mustered five fast break points all game. They laboured while trying to fashion good scoring looks, regularly eating up the shot clock to the final seconds and forcing their shooters to take tough contested shots.
More uncharacteristically still, their off-the-ball grind, which had helped propel the team to the top of the BBL charts for rebounding, wasn't there on Saturday.
The Gladiators outrebounded the Flyers 42-33 on their own court, and guard David Sloan - who finished with a game-high 27 points - seemed to find it all too easy to find space and glide to the rim, with one typically accurate floated finish causing Kapoulas to stamp his foot in frustration and call a time-out.
“Our defence was not up to the level required and offensively we’ve got to do a better job in terms of creating shots for each other," Kapoulas said. “We were slow to the actions and not very sharp, and Caledonia were. That’s basketball right there.
“If you’re not going to sprint to spots, if you’re going to set good screens, if you’re not going to create an advantage out of your actions, you’re not going to end up getting very good shots, so you’re going to get late in the clock with someone having to do something individually to create a shot.”
Kapoulas added the Flyers - now 5-3 on the season and still second in the league table - could not hide behind their shortened rotation or the quick turnaround between contests for a performance they “just didn’t feel was good enough."
“You can find excuses if you want to. Yeah we are men down and obviously [Miller and Bell III] are two very important players, but we cannot hide behind those things," he added. "This is life in the BBL, other teams will have problems like that throughout the course of the year, other teams will play back-to-back.
“We’ve got to have an underdog mentality, other guys have to step up and we’ve got to do it together as a team. Unfortunately for large spells of the [Caledonia] game we didn’t do it together as a team on offence or on defence. If we have spells like that in our game, it’s going to be a difficult night.”
Kapoulas revealed that Miller had been “a bit poorly” last week but was hopeful he could get back on concussion protocol, as the court General builds towards a potential return for the Flyers’ next two games.
Both at home, they have a rematch against the Gladiators on Friday before the visit of league leaders London Lions on Sunday.
“He’s just got to make sure he hits all the stages of the protocol before he is cleared to play. We’ll see how he goes this week, hopefully he will be on the court sooner rather than later.”
Kapoulas added Bell III’s latest injury setback would also be monitored in practice over the next week.
“He cleared from the concussion protocol, and was fine in that regard. He picked up a little hip injury and he could just not carry on. We tried again at half-time but again it was feeling very difficult for him, there was a clear discomfort.
“We don’t really recall exactly what happened, but it’s like a little bit of a dead hip type of situation, so probably a knock of some kind.”
In the meantime, Kapoulas said the team had “a little bit of soul searching” to do. “We’ve had a good start, things can turn around very quickly, you can pick up a couple of losses. There’s plenty of time, there’s certainly a lot of games.
“We’ve got to understand what wins basketball games for us. Our togetherness, irrespective of talent, has been a key part of that, and for us to be successful we have got to be the better team, like we have been up to now. So a little bit of work to do, but we’ve got to get there so we’re ready to go next time.”
