Rivers Hoopers fell to the biggest loss in their history going down 93-57 to Kwara Falcons on Thursday in the Kwesé Basketball Premier League at the Indoor Sports Hall of the Kwara Stadium, Ilorin. The loss led to a disagreement between the opposing coaches.
This was only the second loss of the season for the Kingsmen, but it marked a record defeat and one that had little redeeming features.
Such was the unexpected margin of defeat that a charitable Kwara Falcons coach Adewumi Aderemi put it down to fatigue.
"The Port Harcourt team lost to fatigue. There is no way you will play a game and then go on a 12-hour trip and play a very good team, its going to be very difficult.
"Towards the fourth quarter, they played very well but because they were fatigued they couldn't do much. I capitalised on the first to third quarter of the game," he offered. "We came to Port Harcourt and we lost by 6 points that means they are a good team. Then how will this same good team lose by 25 points today."
But Hoopers coach Ogoh Odaudu was having none of that, and put it down to mistakes from his players.
"I don't think so, Kwara Falcons came to Port Harcourt, they travelled in a worse condition than us and they still put up a good performance. I won't attribute it to fatigue. I think we just played terribly. We could not string two or three passes together, we could not run two offences back to back perfectly.
"You can't win basketball with that amount of mistakes. We will go back to our drawing board because our focus now is on our next game against Oluyole Warriors in Ibadan," said a furious Odaudu.
Somto Managor was the lone bright spot in a terrible performance for Hoopers, scoring 11 points and 2 rebounds. The KingsMen started the game in a lackadaisical manner, lacking patience on the ball from the onset, missing point blank layups with multiple careless passes equating to a mind-boggling 31 turnovers committed by the team.
Falcons exploited defensive errors by the away side, and the only time there were lead changes was early in the first quarter. The first quarter however ended with Hoopers trailing by as much as 13 points (25-12). A 49-22 second half score saw a 22-point half time deficit. Things went downhill from there, with Falcons adding 37 points in the third while Hoopers could only score 16 to trail by 48 points going into the final quarter of what eventually ended up as a 36-point rout.
The damage had already been done by the new conference leaders despite Hoopers winning the last quarter (11-19). The Port Harcourt side was able to limit the Falcons to a 0-6 run with less than two minutes left to play. And the only three point shot by the team came in the last few minutes of the last quarter by Victor Atisele. The only 3 point shot in 12 attempts.
Hoopers will now look to banish the effect of the debilitating loss, like they did after their Matchweek 1 loss in Lagos, when they travel to Ibadan to engage Oluyole Warriors on Saturday.