PAUL Blake believes luckless Newcastle Eagles have finally caught a break after clinching the signing of former Plymouth Raiders star Andrew Lasker until the end of the season.
The Eagles swooped to sign the 6ft 2ins guard earlier in the week and after the player made a personal trip to London to sort out his visa situation, he is eligible to play in the weekend double header with Worcester Wolves and Plymouth Raiders.
That is a timely fillip for the BBL champions, who have lost leading point scorer Trey Moore and Joe Chapman to season-ending injuries – as well as suffering a devastating loss at Milton Keynes on Wednesday.
Houston-born Lasker has been one of the league’s leading players for the last couple of seasons and was only a free agent after failing to land a move to a European club.
A three-point specialist, he is one of the few point guards with experience of the British league with stats that even bear comparison to five-time BBL all-star Moore, ruled out for the rest of the campaign with a broken foot.
He could jet out to Newcastle today to meet his new team-mates and looks set to go straight into the rotation for the gruelling title run-in.
“We’re very lucky to be signing him. He has always been on our radar and we’ve looked at him a lot in the past,” Blake said.
“I think he had the offer of staying at Plymouth but he was looking to get into a European club. His stats last year bear comparison to just about anyone in the league and we’re just really lucky that he was available.
“In terms of players that we could have signed – either here or abroad – he is probably the best of the bunch.”
The Eagles certainly needed a slice of good fortune as their season hurtles towards a crossroads.
Having lost at Milton Keynes on Wednesday – and seen league leaders the Mersey Tigers pull a victory from the jaws of defeat against third-placed Sheffield Sharks – they have now conceded control over their own destiny.
Wins over Worcester and Plymouth, both teams that have beaten the Eagles on their own patch recently, are essential if they are to make it an unprecedented fourth successive BBL title victory.
“I’ve never known a season like it,” Blake admitted. “In the 14 seasons that I have been involved with the Eagles we’ve only ever had two season-ending injuries, so to have two in quick succession is just absolutely unheard of.
“But we’ve not won games that we really should have won. We needed that victory over Milton Keynes but I think we just got caught cold coming off the bus again. The driver got held up on the M1 so we were late getting to the venue and when we eventually arrived we were down by too many points to get back into the game in the end.
“But the crazy thing is that a few minutes before the end of our game we were winning and the Tigers were getting beaten, which would have put us back at the top. Now our destiny is out of our hands again, which is frustrating.
“We have to keep battling on right until the end of the season though. We still have our game with the Tigers and the Sheffield Sharks play them again twice so it isn’t over by a long way.”
