Gloucester Sport CEO Jay Marriott is full of belief after the Gloucester City Kings beat Exeter Spartans 57-44 to take them to two consecutive wins in the National Basketball League England.
Marriott a former professional basketball player himself spent last season head coach of the Gloucester City Queens franchise which unfortunately disbanded after just one season in the Women’s British Basketball League.
Earlier this year Marriott announced he was joining the kings in a player/coach role in order to add his experience to what was already a promising squad and since then results have improved for the Kings.
“For me I’m super proud of the guys,” said Marriott. “This is not them suddenly working hard, they’ve been working hard all year I just think that what we were trying to implement at the beginning just wasn’t working.
“Coming into the fold in January I came in confident that I could help them on and off the court which is not just a reflection of my experience it’s a reflection that we have a really good group.“
“We just needed that little bit more commitment and we needed to change a few things that I believe suited us as a team and a style as well as an organisation.“
“Sometimes you need a bit of luck on your side, this recent form hasn’t been instantaneous. Since January we’ve just closed the gap on every team we’ve played for the second time this season,” continued Marriott.
“We showed improvements without the wins and now we are getting the wins, I strongly believe we’ve still got more in the tank. We have two really tough games left, however I think everybody has been bitten by the bug of getting these wins.2
“I said to the team after the Cardiff game which was a relief to get a win ‘lets be greedy, don’t just take the win and say hey that’s a good job, go for another one and another one and try and end the season on as high as we possibly can.”
“Saturday was the most complete performance I’ve seen from us we kept to the game plan really really well, different guys stepped up at different times which has been missing at times.“
“Sometimes we’ve had great spells as a group and other times bad spells however, today we had some individuals who held us down and got us over the line which is great to see.”
Next up for the Kings is a trip to Bognor on Sunday March 19th at the Arena Sports Centre.
