The Kent Crusaders can look back on a year that in some ways was disappointing, but which also showed promise for the future.

The season started with a lot of new faces, as previous head coach Jesse Sazant retired to a post as Director of Basketball for the club and several players retired or moved on to other challenges. Sazant was replaced by Dane Mads Olesen, in his first UK head coaching job, assisted by Toby Chant, in his first men’s coaching stint and the Crusaders brought in several young players to try and fill the shoes of the departed players.

“We knew it was going to be a tough task replacing players like captain Paul Jessop, star point guard Gary Davidson and part-time starters James Acres, James Parker and Lee Butters, but both returning and new players stepped up and created a lot of hope for the future”, said Olesen of his first season at the helm. “It’s always going to be difficult to lose that many experienced players, as it just takes time for the players to get to know each other properly on the court. At times we struggled to find an identity as a team, but towards the end of the year things started to come together”.

To fill the void left by the departing players the Crusaders signed youngsters Rikki Broadmore, 18, and Dan Garrad, 17, from the Barking Abbey Basketball Academy and JP Dimandja, 21, from the London Eastside Eagles. “Over the course of the season they all matured and improved greatly”, said Olesen, “Rikki and JP quickly became important players, and started a lot of games, and Dan grew into the role as the season progressed, and became one of our most important defenders down the stretch. Rikki coming in and breaking the single season assists record with 89 assists at age 18, and JP coming in fourth on the single season rebounds records with 110 shows how big these youngsters played.”

As good as the new youngsters were, the returning players had big shoes to fill. “When you lose players who played as many minutes, as we did before this season, you would expect the returning players to struggle, as they were not the stars the year before, but the veterans impressed me greatly this year”, said Olesen, “They had to step up and take responsibility and become leaders, and they really did that better than anyone could expect.”

On the court the team equalled the record of 06-07, earning seven wins and 15 losses in league play, good for ninth place in Division 2. While the team struggled against relegation and was only safe with two games to play in the season, defensively the team gained confidence as the season wore on. “We absolutely shut down teams for longer stretches than any other team I’ve even been a part of”, said Crusaders veteran Mike Webber, continuing, “Sometimes teams just didn’t score on us for 10-15 minutes at a time, and that’s something to build on”.

Coach Olesen agreed; “We definitely developed a defensive identity behind players like captain Pete Ayling, Mike Webber, Sam Betts, Dimandja, Broadmore and veteran Jeff Wadey. When we were clicking defensively, teams looked downright bewildered trying to find a way to score, but at the same time I can not be happy that we were not able to play with that intensity all the time”.

Indeed the Crusaders tended to give up huge runs, and on more than one occasion lost games on huge runs by their opponents. Olesen looked towards the offence to explain this: “Early in the season we tried to answer runs by putting up quick shots that gave the other team the ball right back to run it down our throats. As the season progressed, everyone started to understand that lock-down defence would be the only way to win games, and when we really needed it we secured ourselves in the division by playing an almost perfect defensive game against Northumbria, setting the club record for fewest points scored against us in Division 2, good for third lowest score ever against the club”.

Offensively the Crusaders often struggled to put points on the board, as only three players were able to average double figure scoring. Only Steve Findley and James Harris were able to average more than ten points per game on a regular basis over the season, as the last player on the list, Robbie Parker, was only able to play five league games because of injuries. Late in the year Sam Betts and Mike Webber also stepped up their scoring, becoming real threats offensively.

“Offence is often the first thing that struggles when players that doesn’t know each other are brought together, and that was certainly the case this year”, thought Olesen, “It got better over the year, as we were able to tweak the offence so it suited the kind of players we had, but to be honest we got most of our scoring off good defence, and offence definitely something we need to address for next year”.

Looking ahead there is a sense of optimism in the club and among the players, as the club will look to retain the core group of players for next season. Point guard Damian Lyons expressed it this way: “This year was a rebuilding year with lots of new players coming into the team. Hopefully we can have more continuity going into next season and with a few added pieces I feel we can challenge at the top of the division”.

Mike Webber agreed: “I was impressed by the team’s character in gutting out close wins in important games, which bodes well for next year”.

Coach Olesen also thinks the club is on the way up. “There has been a lot of changes at the club over the last year, as we have strengthened the organization greatly, providing the players with a good club to play for. We now have the basis for bringing in one or two key players, and if we do that I agree with Mike and Damian that we can improve greatly on our result from this year”.

Notes:

·         Steve Findley needs three games to reach 100 career games – Jeff Wadey needs five to reach the century mark.

·         JP Dimandja was second in the league with 1.8 blocks per game.

·         Robbie Parker needs 120 points to become the leading scorer in club history, passing Paul Jessop’s 1159 points.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 12:16 am and is filed under General Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.