Seeking Their First Win: The Baskets Host Heidelberg

One of these two teams will earn its first points of the season on Saturday. When the VIMODROM Baskets Jena host the USC BasCats Heidelberg at 4:00 p.m. at the Lobeda West sports complex, both teams will be 0-2 in the Toyota 2. DBBL South. Heidelberg is in eighth place, and we’re in ninth, separated only by point differential. For us, this is the first home game of the season.

We know our opponent well. Heidelberg beat us 64–60 at home in December, and we returned the favor with a 66–63 win in Heidelberg in March. Both teams finished the regular season with 17 wins and 5 losses. Because Heidelberg won the head-to-head matchups by a one-point margin, they finished second and we finished third. That was the only difference.

A lot has changed for the BasCats since then. The new head coach is Niko Kuusi from Finland, who most recently coached the Eigner Angels Nördlingen and before that was in Helsinki, where he led ToPo to the first championship title in the club’s history. The entire coaching staff is new. The goal is clear: promotion, which Heidelberg reportedly missed by three points last season. To achieve this, the club is relying on a young roster; six players were born between 2007 and 2010.

The team is shaped by two new additions. Marissa Pangalos, a Cypriot national team player from the Swedish league’s Uppsala Basket, leads the team onto the court as captain alongside Julia Wroblewski and has already caused a stir with her solo plays right from the start. Under the basket is Kiyara Letlow, a 1.85-meter-tall Canadian who holds the career rebound record in the Canadian university league, U Sports. The two hit it off right away.

The season opener against newly promoted TS Jahn Munich went awry, however. Heidelberg led by 16 points but ended up losing 65–75 after a 0–18 run by the Munich team in the final quarter. Pangalos and Letlow scored 51 of the 65 points; the rest of the team contributed little. That’s precisely the question facing the BasCats: Who will take the pressure off the two of them when the game gets tight?

For us, the situation is a bit better than it was in Freiburg, because Jada Smith is here. The point guard missed the season opener because her work permit hadn’t been issued yet. Now she’s eligible to play and can take the court for us for the first time. Also on the roster is Magdalena Zimmermann, 17 years old, another point guard who joined us through our partnership with the halfit LIONS from Halle.

How can we slow Heidelberg down? If we keep Pangalos away from the basket early on and don’t leave Letlow alone under the boards, the others will have to run the offense. That requires pace and patience on our own end. Come on out and make some noise.