The Medway Park Crusaders will face a home and away double header this coming weekend.

On Saturday, Medway Park welcome the London Leopards in a key National Trophy match before travelling to face Newham in the 2nd round of the National Cup.

Saturday’s match-up will be crucial for Medway Park as they are currently 0-2 in the Trophy.  They must finish in the top 4 of their group of 6 to advance to the quarterfinals.  To do this they will likely need to win at least 2 of their remaining 3 games.

Leopards come into the game 1-1 in the Trophy after a tough overtime loss to Derby on the weekend.  This will be the second time the teams meet this season, having squared off in the Crusaders pre-season tournament.  Medway Park were victorious on that occasion but London have since added American guard Vernon Teel.

Leopards will be led by their 2 Americans, Teel and last season’s star player Ousman Krubally.  Teel announced his arrival in England with a 38 point, 10 rebound effort against Derby, while Krubally tallied 36 with an astonishing 20 rebounds.

Surrounding the imports will be a large contingent of exciting young players produced through Barking Abbey’s academy.

Crusaders Head Coach James Vear is aware of the threat Leopards bring, “Leopards are one of the teams I expect to be close to the top come the end of the season.  They have one of the best players in the league in Krubally who can do a bit of everything and reminds me a lot of Adrian (Fenyn).  Coach Mihevc seems to be doing a great job bringing through the younger players as well, with some of them still eligible to play U18 & U16.  It’s great to see these young English players given a chance to compete at this level which can only be good for their development.”

He added, “It’s also nice to see Rikki Broadmore back as he is a previous Crusader player and now an assistant coach with Leopards.”

On Sunday, Crusaders will travel to Newham to face the Newham NASSA Neptunes.  NASSA are one of the highest regarded junior clubs in London and nationally.  The senior team is rapidly developing with exciting young players and will pose a real challenge for Crusaders, especially as they will only be allowed to play 1 of their import players.  Cup rules mean that any EBL1 team playing an opponent from a lower division is only permitted to play 1 import player.

Coach Vear knows that NASSA are more than capable of pulling off the upset, “NASSA I think have the best EBL3 line-up in the country.  They have a lot of experience and some players who have played at the highest level in this country.  One of those players is ex-Crusader Damian Lyons who played for the Crusaders for a number of years.  It will be strange to play against him after coaching him for a number of years.  We know how good he is and what he brings to any team he plays for.  We will have to play very well if we want to progress to the next round.”

Overall despite some early season set backs, Vear remains very positive, “We have changed a few things in practice and the team have responded very well to the changes.  Defensively we need to be a lot better and make sure we play defense as a team.  We also need to make sure we are focused for the full 40 minutes, in this league if you lose your concentration even for a couple of minutes teams will capitalise on that.

The team chemistry is still very good and I can feel us getting better every time we practice.  Having some of the guys return from last years team including Sam Betts and JP Dimandja has improved practice as they know what I expect and its two more players pushing for minutes.”