University of Worcester were named champions today at the BUCS Big Wednesday, where they won 34:74 in the wheelchair basketball final against University of Nottingham.

MVP and University of Worcester captain George Gray commented:
“It was a great game today, you know we expected the players that were playing and we came in with a good game plan. Starting off didn’t go particularly our way but we managed to make some adjustments and really perform well as a team.

“Our focus definitely was how can we win together as a team and I definitely feel like we’ve done that today. We won last year, but going into this season we started the season not so well, unfortunately we lost some games. What we did was we went away from it, we watched some film, we really looked at how we can improve. Especially coming into the playoffs we really worked together as a team, had a good game plan, video sessions, broke down the way we played our basketball and we were able to beat our potential rivals Loughborough in the semi-finals and we did very well as a team then. We used that momentum to come into the final and win back-to-back.

“I just want to give a shoutout to the University of Worcester for the supplies they give us and all the support they give us, also the University of Worcester arena again for allowing us to use the facilities and giving us the support that they do.”

University of Nottingham’s captain, Lewis Evans, commented:
“I had an absolute blast playing with the guys this season. The improvement we’ve had this season has been tremendous, from the first game of the season to the last like maximum effort, maximum improvement.

“This is some of the guys’ first season playing BUCS and first season in competitive wheelchair basketball and its been amazing to see the development and the intensity and everything that everyone has put into it has really come on to a good level of basketball being played. The score line doesn’t really show the effort we put in and how proud we are of our improvement and how lucky we are to be here so all smiles for us.

“Shoutout to Joe Bestwick and Lydia. Joe’s our head coach and he’s done a fantastic job with our development, coming in for individual sessions as well as team sessions and Lydia for our S&C and our physio has been massively instrumental in our physical development, doing team sessions and individual sessions for our scholars and for the rest of our athletes as well. They’ve been an integral part of our development and thank you a lot to them.”

Watch the game back live via the BUCS YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZWeYZh0h0U

Find out more about BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sport) via their website: https://www.bucs.org.uk/