London Lions head coach Ryan Schmidt:
"I was really happy with our guys’ performance, mainly in the second half. I thought in the first half they had us on our heels, they are a very good defensive team, the way they impede on you was disruptive to us. We had to make some adjustments at halftime. To be honest, it was a little bit different last week in the game against Tel Aviv when a lot of fouls were being called, whereas the referees allowed a lot more physicality this week. It took its toll on us and resulted in 16 turnovers [in the first half]. You’re not going to beat a good team when you turn the ball over that much so to be down by 2 at halftime the way we were playing, I thought we were in a good position.
"We had to be better in taking care of the ball and again, I thought we saw that in the second half. Jordan Taylor really imposed his will on the game to start the third quarter right away. We started knocking down some shots, we opened up our offense quite a bit and I thought our defensive presence, especially in the fourth quarter, helped us get some stops and open up the lead. Any time you can come on the road and get a win in the EuroCup competition, it’s huge. It’s a tough one because if you look at [Trento’s] season, they had two really big wins here against Gran Canaria and Milan, so we knew it was going to be a tough battle.
"We’re still playing kind of a seven-to-eight-man rotation as we are missing so many guys, hopefully, we will start getting them back soon.
But again I think we are trending in the right direction and we’ve got to keep going.
"[Dekker] was upset [at halftime] and again, I think that’s where we’ve got to be better. I like the physicality defensively, we kind of embraced that as there is a little bit of contrast in the two games. Last week a lot of those were being called fouls whereas this week reminded me a lot more of the first nine games from the refereeing standpoint. Because the whistle wasn’t blowing led to some frustration that shouldn’t have shown. Credit to [Trento], I think you could tell their game plan was to be defensively physical and try to push us off our spots, not allow any easy opportunities or just to get open. We kind of regrouped at halftime and said ‘hey listen, 20 minutes have gone by, we’ve seen what they are calling and we’ve seen what they are allowing and now we’ve got to adapt’."