Around The Basketball League: Week 2 Tips-Off In TBL, Terrence Roderick Returns Home With Lehigh Valley Legends, Coach Dannhoff And Enid Outlaws Tasked With Defending The Crown
If you're in need of quenching your thirst for pro basketball, this is the chance to drink up some TBL hoops with 41 games taking place over the next four days.
One week down, 23 more to go.
As teams around the TBL get ready to begin Week 2 play around the league today, the Sugar Land Imperials concluded a competitive opening week of basketball by improving their record to 2-0 after a 97-90 victory over the Beaumont Panthers on Thursday night at Ford Park Arena. The bragging rights this time for Team Market Owners went to Ricky Davis and the Imperials instead of Kendrick Perkins, with a revenge game slated between the two teams on March 19 at Wheeler Arena in Tilden, Texas.
To borrow Kendrick Perkin’s mantra – Carry On!
The overall TBL schedule over the next four day is stacked with 14 games taking place today, 15 games on Saturday, 11 games on Sunday, and 1 game set for Monday. You can follow all of the games by signing-up and tuning into TBL TV and catching league-wide score updates and results on the official TBL website…
Lehigh Valley Legends Add Experience By Inking Veteran Shooting Guard, Terrence Roderick
There are player signings in The Basketball League and then there are player signings in The Basketball League that make you do a double-take. On Thursday, the Lehigh Valley Legends made one of those impressive additions by welcoming Terrence Roderick back to Allentown, Pennsylvania.
The announcement couldn’t come at a better time for the 0-2 Legends who go up against the 2-0 Albany Patroons on Friday.
A member of the 2006 Allen Basketball team that made it to the PIAA quarterfinals, Roderick has been around the world and back again with the 6’6 shooting guard stamping his passport from Austria, to Italy, Israel, and Argentina, where he most recently played for Quimsa in Basketball Champions League Americas. The 12th year pro out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham certainly has come a long way since averaging 5.6 points per game for the Blaze.
Roderick’s best scoring season as a pro thus far came in Italy with second division Unieuro Forli when he averaged 22.5 points and 5.2 rebounds per game during the 2011-12 season, followed by the 2018-19 season when Roderick averaged a double-double (20.1 points and 10.7 rebounds per game) in Italy with Bergamo Basket 2014.
With size and experience in the backcourt, the Lehigh Valley Legends are fortunate to be able to ink a veteran player of Terrence Roderick’s caliber.
Coach Dannhoff And Enid Outlaws Tasked With Staying Power In TBL Title Reign
No one said defending that 2021 TBL championship crown in Oklahoma was going to be easy. The Enid Outlaws (1-1) are finding that out early as they took a split of their games in the first week. Chalk it up to becoming familiar with the unfamiliar.
Fall to Sugar Land in the season opener.
Bounce back with a W against Beaumont.
“They are still trying to get to know me and things I like and how I do things. I’m also trying to learn them, but we still don’t have a solid rotation. We had an exhibition game and tried to play everyone, but there was no rhyme or reason to playing a lineup,” Outlaws head coach Mark Dannhoff told the Enid News & Eagle.
With over 30 years of coaching experience in college and serving as an assistant coach at the University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley from 2010-20, Coach Dannhoff knows how to build a program and get the most of his players time and again. And while this may be his first year as a head coach in the TBL, some things simply don’t change around the game regardless of the level: each game is a chance to learn and get better.
“We are certainly disappointed that we didn’t finish the first one, but we learned from it and matured a little bit. We still have a bit to go.”
That “bit to go” will certainly test the champion staying power of Enid in what is a very tough and competitive Central Conference with the Dallas Skyline, Potawatomi Fire, Shreveport Mavericks, and the Sugar Land Imperials all off to a 2-0 start. Coach Dannhoff and the Outlaws will get a chance to solidify things more with some home cooking in their opener this weekend as they welcome Potawatomi and Waco to town.
*lead photo courtesy of Jarrod Brown
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Wendell Maxey has covered and written about professional basketball and sports for 19 years and has previously been featured on ESPN.com, NBA.com, USA Today, FOX Sports, and SLAM Magazine among other publications and outlets. Connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn or read through his archive on Linktree.