Sitting at the top of the Super League Basketball standings, winners of the Betty Codona Trophy, and through to the SLB Cup final, the Sheffield Hatters are well-placed to complete the quadruple this season.
“Going for the quad was our goal at the start of the season internally, and obviously we’re on track for it but we have to play hard, we had to play tough today to win,” said Hatter’s head coach Vanessa Ellis, after the match against the Caledonia Gladiators on Saturday. “Nothing comes easy, but anything worth having you have to work hard for and I’m really pleased and proud of the team and the effort that we put in.”
The quadruple consists of winning the SLB Trophy, Cup, league title, and the Play-off final. The last team to win all four was the London Lions in 2023/24.
The Hatters strengthened their position, maintaining their first place in the season’s standings with a victory against their biggest title rivals the Gladiators at the Canon Medical Arena.
Sheffield-born, Georgia Gayle believes the Hatters have a strong chance at completing the quadruple as the team prepares for the SLB cup final against Manchester on 22 March.
She said: “We’ve beat everybody already, so why shouldn’t we.”
Listen to Shauna Harrison speaking about the match with the Gladiators and how the team is feeling about upcoming final:
The Hatters are on their eighth win in a row after beating the Gladiators 83-70.
Gayle said the key to their current success is their strength as a team.
“We know that teams can’t sustain staying with us for 40 minutes,” she said. “We have a lot of depth in our team so we can sort and rotate everybody, and I feel like maybe other teams don’t have that there so eventually they’re going to start to slow down and that’s when we turn it up.”
Antoinette Lewis, named most valued player of the match, said: “We’re excited. The goal is to go four for four, we’ve won the Trophy, we’ve made it to the cup final, we know it’s going to be hard against Manchester in Manchester.”
The team is ready to “go in fighting” in the final to continue their mission for the quadruple.
