DThe Fraport Skyliners are not the surprise team in the Bundesliga basketball league. This role in the spotlight belongs to the Hamburg Towers, which as the first relegation candidate of the previous season are now in sixth place in the table (16: 6 points) for their standards and which is currently second in the table Merlins Crailsheim (20: 4 points) in an 89: 72 home win have “disenchanted” sporty.
But the strong upward trend of the Skyliners also deserves attention: They won four of the last six games. It would have been five if they hadn’t made an avoidable slip at 74:75 in Giessen. After the false start with 2: 8 points, Frankfurt are now eighth in play-off for the first time this season. And there are some indications that the Skyliners will be able to establish themselves in this table region that is extremely attractive for them.
Because of the next five opponents Würzburg, Hamburg, Bonn, Vechta and Bamberg, only the Hanseatics rank ahead of them in the ranking. The fact that four of the first five Frankfurt opponents of the season (Berlin, Munich, Oldenburg and Ludwigsburg) belong to a different sporting weight class due to their significantly greater economic power, explains the defeats at the beginning of the Hessians.
Home win over Göttingen
After that, they went uphill step by step. The initial negative balance did not deprive them of courage and did not rob them of strength. Rather, the failures showed the team where to improve in competition with the best. The team faced the tough learning process and is now competitive at least in the middle of the table. In the 81:63 home win over Göttingen last Sunday, the Skyliners found themselves in balance for the first time, according to their coach Sebastian Gleim. Attack and defense won the match in lockstep.
“We played well at both ends of the field” – this is how Gleim summed up the successful overall work. In the meantime, the Skyliners have found the right mix of individual class and team spirit. The 43 rebounds and the 22 assists against Göttingen heralded this. The star of the team is Mobley (30 points), who averaged 26.3 points in the past four games. With a total of 20.4 points per game, the American is the second best shooter in the league. And there is no end in sight to his upswing: After his long break from playing in the summer, Mobley’s fitness is getting better and better.
Air sovereignty for Robertson
The same goes for captain Quantez Robertson, who always plays the same game at the start of the season. The pounds that he gained in the summer months must first be downplayed. And the livelier the 36-year-old gets, the better he can bring his strengths as a defender and ball thief. With eleven rebounds, the leading player Robertson had control of the air against Göttingen.
Michael Kessens also made a leap up in his development. The center has gained in mobility and improved its movements. This is reflected in his statistics with an average of 8.8 points and 6.2 rebounds in eleven games.
His former club Vechta only had 4.6 points and 4.2 rebounds per game in its overall balance. Now the Austrian wishes for more “constancy” in the Skyliners game despite the stability he has gained. This claim is a good basis for a continuation of the Frankfurt soaring.
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