The Endeavour Ipswich Basketball Club Senior Women rounded off the regular season in style, beating a talented Loughborough Riders team convincingly, 95-62 on Saturday.
With the league title in the bag, Ipswich could have been forgiven for taking their foot off the gas, however, they did no such thing, with a comprehensive second half performance that took their record to 19-3 on the season.
Ipswich were led by a fantastic 29 point performance from Olivia Forster, while Harriet Welham added 25 and Yazmin Edwards added a 15 & 10 double double. Ipswich were also boosted by the outstanding Louisa Gibbins, who collected fourteen points and eight rebounds as the Suffolk side coasted to victory.
There are still fixtures to be played elsewhere in the league, but the top four is now set with Ipswich taking the league title, with Thames Valley second, CoLA third and Brent Bulls fourth. The race for fifth place is an interesting one, with Reading still having three games to play – should they win them all they will steal fifth place from Loughborough who will drop to sixth. Anglia Ruskin (9-11) Bristol (9-13) and Manchester (8-13) are all in a fight for the final playoff positions, should Manchester win their final game of the season (ARU) then they will steal the 8th seed. Should ARU win that game, then it will be Bristol travelling to Ipswich on the 13th April.
Ipswich, however, have the luxury of sitting back and seeing how this all plays out over the next few weeks. This also allows the Ipswich Basketball family to turn their attention to Wednesday’s WEABL final in Manchester where Copleston will take on back-to-back champions CoLA for the National Championship.