EWE Baskets Oldenburg advanced to the Semi-Finals of the easyCredit BBL Final Tournament 2020 as they ousted Brose Bamberg. Oldenburg won Game 2 of the Quarter-Finals series 89-75 after winning Game 1 by five points to take the aggregate win 175-156.
Ian Hummer paced Oldenburg with 21 points and 9 rebounds while Rickey Paulding had 16 points, Nathan Boothe picked up 16 points, 5 rebounds and 5 blocks, Tyler Larson scored 14 points and Rasid Mahalbasic added 7 points, 6 rebounds and 5 assists for the winners, who will face either ALBA BERLIN or BG Göttingen in the Semis as those two will finish their Quarter-Finals series later in the day.
Bamberg will head home after Kam Taylor tallied 20 in Game 2 with Tre McLean, Jordan Crawford and Christian Sengfelder all scoring 11 points. Bamberg were playing without captain Elias Harris, who missed the game with a back injury.
Oldenburg jumped ahead 6-2 before Crawford scored eight points to put Bamberg up 14-8. Hummer evened the game 14-14 with a three-point play while Sengfelder drained a three-ball as Bamberg led 19-18. Hummer knocked down a triple at the other end and Oldenburg were lead 24-19 after 10 minutes.
Larson hit a trey of his own and added a basket and the Oldenburg advantage was double-digits 29-19. After Paulding connected from long range for a 34-25 Oldenburg cushion, Taylor responded with five points to get within 36-32. Oldenburg punched back with an 11-2 run including treys from Braydon Hobbs and Boothe for a 47-34 margin. It was still a 13-point lead when Bamberg finished the first half with an 8-0 run – seven of those points coming from Taylor – to make it 51-46 at the break.
Paulding picked up four points as Oldenburg opened the second half with the first eight points and held Bamberg scoreless for nearly 4 minutes in moving ahead 59-46. Karsten Tadda and Hobbs both drained three-balls as the lead grew to 65-49 and Mahalbasic’s trey made it 72-53. Bamberg once again finished a quarter strong with the final seven points and it was 72-60.
Crawford entered the fourth quarter with three fouls but committed two fouls in the first 19 seconds to end his night. Hummer’s three-ball started a 9-0 Oldenburg run for an 83-65 lead. Bamberg managed a 10-2 surge to get within 85-73 but Boothe answered with a three-ball to end all doubts.
QUOTES: Oldenburg’s Tyler Larson: “Just trying to get back into the swing of things. The last game against Vechta I felt really good and then you come back three months later and it feels like you’ve never been on the court before. Just trying to get back into the swing of things. Game after game feeling better. And playoffs are important for us, so here we go.”
(Why Oldenburg were better than Bamberg over 80 minutes): “We have a big fella inside. He’s hard to stop, and we played good as a team. We executed our sets, we executed our defensive plan. And at the end of the day, that’s what got us our win. Scouting them correctly and executing our offense.
(About maybe ALBA in the Semis): “We’ve seen them in the Cup Final. We’ve seen them at home, we’ve seen them at their house. We’ve seen them multiple times. We already know what to expect: a hard-fought game every time. We’ll see who is the better team after 80 minutes.”
Bamberg’s Christian Sengfelder: “I think the first half of the first game hurt us. We showed some good energy today. We were unconcentrated at times. Ian Hummer had a super game and that hurt us of course.”
(Playing without Elias Harris): “Elias is a tremendous player. We all know that. The fact that he was absent so last minute hurt us, but I wouldn’t use as an excuse. Next man up mentality, but we weren’t able to show that.”