{"id":449785,"date":"2026-01-31T15:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T15:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/449785\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T15:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T15:38:10","slug":"newcastle-eagles-club-embrace-underdog-tag-for-slb-trophy-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/449785\/","title":{"rendered":"Newcastle Eagles: Club ’embrace’ underdog tag for SLB Trophy defence"},"content":{"rendered":"

London have won 13 of their 15 league games this season to sit top by two points, admittedly with five games in hand on the side in second, Cheshire Phoenix.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Eagles have struggled for large periods, losing 12 of their 18 games to lie in eighth – and in the European North Basketball League in which they were runners-up last season, Newcastle only ended a run of five straight defeats with a win over Croatians KK Dubrava on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

But they have fared better in this competition and edged past Cheshire over two legs in the semi-final to reach this stage.<\/p>\n

Newcastle won this event 12 months ago, beating Bristol Flyers 97-78 in the final <\/a>to claim their 28th major trophy, the most of any club in British basketball.<\/p>\n

And Steutel wants the team to embrace that heritage as they aim to shock the Lions and win the Trophy for a ninth time.<\/p>\n

“London are a powerhouse,” he said.<\/p>\n

“They’re resourced and they’re structured and they are built that way to be a powerhouse – and they have shown that this year with their domestic form.<\/p>\n

“But we’re excited to embrace that underdog mentality and do all we can to have a historic day for us and for British basketball, and hopefully bring ‘our’ trophy back up north.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London have won 13 of their 15 league games this season to sit top by two points, admittedly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-449785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}