Strenuous start into the season against Luxemburg – Gerlach top-scorer
With 50:34 (19:4/33:6/44:20) RSV Lahn-Dill II won against Lux Rollers successfully as well as streaky. Freshly returned Kai Gerlach became top-scorer with 16 points in front of about 100 fans at August-Bebel-Sporthalle in Wetzlar.
Already in the first half it seemed to become a walk in the park for RSV’s second team, when captain David Amend, Kai Gerlach and Felix Schell had already scored double figures and displayed brilliant team-play with the help of Selina Rausch and Christopher Huber, who put them into great shooting positions throughout the game. “Generally this has been a great performance, but right from the start we have been struggling with our defence against Lux Rollers.” says coach Daniel Stange, admitting that it helped RSV that the opposition only had a hit-rate of 12 per cent and therefore was heading for defeat before turnover.
„It’s a difficult situation feeling too safe. If you drop your performance only a little bit, it will strengthen the opposition and you will notice it bitterly” described Kai Gerlach what happened after changeover. The Luxembourg team kept putting their old dog Edwin Klein into good positions, despite him only having scored two points beforehand. The wing-player scored eight points for his team forcing RSV-coach Stange to take a timeout after only four minutes of the third quarter and talk tactical changes.
Despite the strengthened Wetzlar-defence Lux Rollers Antoine and Paulo Soeiro still managed difficult shots. RSV were still up 44:20 after the third quarter, but the game was not as easy as it had been in the first half. The team only scored eight points during the last quarter and basically stumbled into the first win. They will have to up their game before the coming weekend, when they will be travelling to Augsburg.
Lahn-Dill II: David Amend (16), Kai Gerlach (16), Felix Schell (14), Tristan Paar (2), Zacharias Wittmann (2), Carsten Crombach, Barbara Groß, Christopher Huber, Selina Rausch.
Luxemburg: Edwin Klein (12), Werner Kautz (8), Philipp Wosny (6), Jörg Antoine (4), Philippe Faber (2), Paulo Soeiro (2), Raymond Schintg