The Gloucester City Kings picked up a win in their National Basketball League Division Three game against Exeter Spartans at St Peters high school on Saturday afternoon.
The Kings defeated Cardiff Met Archers II in their last game and came into this matchup versus fourth place Spartans with some momentum behind them.
In the first half it was a tight battle between the two teams, the contest was low scoring, but the hosts held a two point advantage going into the break.
While the visiting Exeter looked to make a comeback in the second half, Gloucester were able to create a larger gap to their opponents through their strong defence.
The final quarter saw the Kings runaway with the tie, they executed well offensively and relied heavily upon three-pointers to get them over the line and secure a 57-44 victory.
Picking up successive wins has seen them lift off the bottom of the league after previously suffering 14 defeats on the bounce.
A key factor in these last two games has been the influence of Jay Marriott on the team, he was the leading scorer with 16 points at the weekend, ahead of Maciej Gniady and Nick Yiolpasis who both totalled 14 points.
Following the game Marriott spoke about the win, he said: “A great win, we felt like we could get them, we have been getting better and better. The intensity has got better in practice, we felt we had a real chance today.
“We’ve talked all year about when we’ve chalked the first win off we want to go and get some more.”
With just two games remaining this season, the team will be hoping to continue their good form and end on a high.
Marriott also touched on the good defence he and his teammates played to limit the Spartans to just 44 points, he shared: “We are delighted, that is what we talked about in the first half, we wanted to make it a war of attrition and try to keep their points down.
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“We’ve not been scoring a lot of points this year so we’ve got to try and bring our level up and bring other people’s down and I think we did that really well today.”
