Coventry Flames to take on Northampton Titans

Flames pre-match warm up.

Coventry Flames play their first away match of the season this Saturday at 3pm. The team face Northamptonshire Titans at the Northampton School for boys. In their division of the British basketball national league, Coventry currently stand 5th while the Titans are down at 8th.

I spoke to Luis Romero - the coach for the Flames and basketball generally, to see how he thought the game would play out.

“I’m expecting the match to be quite competitive. I believe their team is quite young, a few college kids that are coming up. I met the coach this summer, he seemed like a knowledgable guy, so it should be a very interesting and energetic game.”

The team recently played the Bromsgrove Bears but lost 75-92. I asked Luis about the reason behind this.

“Last match we lost, but it was a very emotional day for us… we were honouring one of our players who recently passed. Emotions were very high, all round. His family was present, his brother was playing for the other team and I think overall it was very competitive, we had a very good start, but I think just the level of emotion that was in that game may have overwhelmed us by the end and thats why we lost the game.”

To commemorate Zaki the team have new shirts with his name and number.

Luis also wanted to expand on how Coventry Flames is more then just basketball.

“In general Coventry Flames is affiliated with the university to provide students with the opportunity to play. We build the program around more of a family base environment, where we have external guys coming in to support the students to help them navigate day to day and life stuff. So we have people who can be that mentor and give that advice to students.”

“At the minute we have had two bad results but I am optimistic that we can bounce back and get going again.”