National success for Essex Blades men's basketball team

Essex Blades men’s basketball team were roared to success in the Basketball England National League Division 4 then days later stormed to victory in the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) National Trophy.

The Essex Blades men’s basketball team, sponsored by Sportsafe UK, is enjoying huge national success after being established as one of the University of Essex’s focus sport teams. That means talented student players are supported by sports scholarships which provide comprehensive training and support packages.

League victory for Essex Blades

The Essex Blades men’s team secured the league title with its 82-76 victory against second placed Middlesex Saxons in front of a crowd of over 100 spectators who packed in to courtside at the University of Essex’s sports centre. Essex Blades started the season with two straight defeats, but found form and ended the season with 14 wins and just four losses.

National trophy triumph

The final of the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) National Trophy took place at the University of Bath and Essex Blades dominated their opponents the University of Glasgow to win 80-54. First year nursing student Leigh Greenan was named the most valuable player (MVP). This success follows on from the National Trophy won by the women’s volleyball team last year.

Titles for men's and women's team

Both the Men’s and Women’s basketball teams also won their respective BUCS Division One titles, winning all 10 matches in the process.

The men have now gone three straight seasons achieving 10 wins and 0 defeats in the regular BUCS league season and the women have done so for two straight seasons.

Director of Sport at Essex Dr Dave Parry said: “Our basketball programme has been growing and developing over the past three seasons, and we are now, quite rightly regarded as one of the best University teams in the country.

“Head coach Mark Lloyd, and the team of assistant coaches and support staff have worked extraordinarily hard to get the teams to where they are now, and their level of performance is a great credit to all of the staff and to the students themselves”

Support your team to more success

The men’s basketball team is now going in to play-off matches to try to win promotion to next season’s BUCS Premier League.

Today Wednesday (29 March) the men’s team is at home for the first leg against the University of Bath at 6pm.

All are welcome to come and support the teams, the atmosphere promises to be electric!

The men’s team will finish their season at the end of April with an international tournament in Antwerp playing against some of our partner Universities from the YERUN group.