National League Division One: Taunton Tigers 72, Derby Trailblazers 76.

TAUNTON Tigers produced a strong performance at the Wellsprings Centre in their first league outing of the season on Sunday, but ultimately suffered a close-fought defeat.

Derby started the stronger of the two teams, opening the game by sinking four three-point shots and leading 12-16 at the end of the first quarter.

They then went on to dominate the second quarter and opened up a 28–39 advantage at the half. Despite some good inside play by the Anderson brothers, the Tigers’ play had become ragged as the foul count stacked up very heavily in Derby’s favour.

Taunton came out for the start of the second half determined to claw their way back into the game and they did so superbly.

The fightback was led by Tim Clifford who scored 11 points in the quarter. An 18-5 run saw the home side take the lead for the first time at 48-47 with 1min44sec left in the third quarter.

Unfortunately, the effort seemed to catch up with Taunton. In the final period they couldn’t hold on to the lead and fell behind by 13 points at one stage. They made one last push with the aid of two three-pointers from Joe Andrews but fell four points short.

After the game Tigers’ head coach Tom Kambouris said: “I give Derby all the credit. Their senior players executed when it mattered, although I thought we played well enough to win.”

Leading Tigers’ scorers: Yabsley 14, Clifford 14, Rickwood 12.

Women’s National Cup: Taunton Tigers 22, UWIC Archers 65.

HAVING lost the previous week in a Division Two match against UWIC’s second team, Taunton’s women knew they were in for a tough time against the first string, who are unbeaten in Division One.

Tigers found it difficult to score against a quick, aggressive UWIC side. But they contained the visitors to a much lower score than many had anticipated and received praise from the visitors’ coach.

Leading Tigers scorers: Byrne 7, Watkins 7, Shaikh 4.

ON Saturday, Tigers’ men host London Leopards with a 6.30pm tip at Wellsprings. The following day they travel to Bristol hoping to go to the last eight in the National Cup against local rivals Flyers.

Also on Saturday the men’s second team will hope to build-on their win over Bath Titans when they travel to St Austell for their Division Four game with Cornwall Cougars and the women can expect a tough away game in Birmingham in Division Two.

TAUNTON Revolution travelled to Exeter to play the undefeated University side and they took the early lead by playing tough defence against the younger opposition.

Good offensive starts for Cooper with 7 points and Gladys with 6 in the first quarter, would see Taunton lead at the end of quarter 1 18-14. University stepped up their defence forcing the Revolution into turnovers and few easy scoring opportunities.

University kept edging closer, and would eventually snatch the lead 26-28 at halftime. In the third this continued, and the Revolution fought back to be down 40-45 at the top of the fourth.

Again, the University team took advantage of consistent team play to increase their lead to as many as 12 points. In the final few minutes, a Revolution press led to steals and scores putting the University team under pressure, but solid free throw shooting for Uni sealed the game with a final score of 59-67.

Top scorer was Brett Cooper with 24 points.

Taunton player-coach Marc Eggleton remained positive despite the loss, saying: “In the last three games we have shown ourselves and the best teams in the league that we can stay with them, and dominate the game at times which is a huge achievement. The future does look extremely positive if we continue to improve and step up.”

The next game is at Castle School Sports Centre against North Devon in the first round of the cup, on Monday, at 8.30pm. Spectators/supporters enter for free. Revolution website – www.revolution-basketball.co.uk