Basketball: Spatcher's furious after loss to Leeds
Northampton Neptunes 84 Leeds Carnegie 108
Neptunes couldn't make it back-to-back wins as league leaders Leeds proved to be to too strong.
Despite playing some good basketball in spells, poor foul shooting and a high foul count against them saw the Neptunes eventually go down to a 20-point defeat.
The game may have been different if the officials called the countless fouls on the Neptunes guards in the first quarter as they attacked the basket.
England Basketball sent one of their top officials to the game to asses the refereeing performances.
After the game she had commented on the lack of fouls called in favour of the Neptunes when the team had attacked the basket in that period.
Player-coach Mark Spatcher was disappointed with the performance of the match officials, and said: "We put some good spells of basketball together, we stuck to our game plan and on another day the game could have been a lot closer.
"I think we had a good eight shooting fouls in the opening five minutes not called.
"Once Leeds realise that they could get away with that type of contact around the basket, they simply continued to infringe the play.
"It was a little disappointing that the officials failed to see what was happening but it was like the assessor said after the game both officials ball-watched to much.
"Leeds would have had to adjust if those calls would have been made, and it would have made it a lot more difficult for two of their key players to defend when in foul trouble.
"Having said that there are also facets of our game that let us down.
If we are to beat the Raiders this weekend we'll need to address them this week in practice."
Top scorers for the Neptunes were Sherrad Prezzie-Blue with 19 points Spatcher gave support with 17 points with Francis Tebo hitting 12 points.
Ben Knight also hit double figures and looks to have regained his form.
The Neptunes are back in action this Saturday when they travel to Plymouth to take on the Raiders.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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