Women’s Report: Bristol Flyers 62-57 Team Solent Kestrels

Sunday, November 17th 2019

Bristol Flyers Women fought hard to avoid a third-straight loss at the hands of Team Solent Kestrels

The Flyers opened the game with a 4-0 run, but Kestrels' shooters responded and the visitors quickly gained a lead by the same margin. With Flo Ward engineering scoring chances for herself and her team, Megan Stroud picked up early points in the paint and the Flyers had the lead back late in the first.

Solent's Krisztina Velkey dropped a long-range three at the buzzer to bring the gap to just one point at the end of the opening quarter. They continued to hit from beyond the arc in the second, with most of the Flyers’ points coming from the free-throw line.

Hannah Wallace responded in turn with threes of her own, lifting the Flyers ahead at the end the first half, 34-29.

The Flyers came out firing on offence in the second half, with Ward and Mai Zilbeti building the lead as the game resumed. Solent kept up the pressure with swarming defence and smart, tough offence that the Flyers could not stop. They did enough to hold on to their lead at the end of a tense third quarter, which stood at 49-43.

Solent resorted to fouling the Flyers throughout the fourth quarter. Wallace and Leila Jepson interrupted the rhythm with open-play points, but Solent took advantage of the Flyers’ openings in their defence and the gap between the two started getting smaller and smaller.

The Flyers four-point lead was under threat going into the last two minutes of the game, but with Solent missing their attempts at the basket, they survived this increasingly heated encounter with one of the league’s most dicey opponents.

Their next match-up will be a cup game away to the Worcester Wolves on Sunday, November 24th and are next due to play at home on Saturday, December 14th against Barking Abbey.