Mackenzie Completes Month of Highlights

Leicester Riders’ guard Kimbal Mackenzie has accomplished a month of private highlights with the Molten BBL Participant of the Month award for February, gaining such recognition for the primary time – in his second season within the BBL – together with another firsts in latest weeks.

Mackenzie has been instrumental in a run of three straight BBL Championship wins in February that has seen the third-placed Riders bounce again from defeat within the BBL Cup Ultimate and elimination from the BBL Trophy.

Most notably he scored knowledgeable profession excessive of 31 factors in a highway win at Cheshire Phoenix, capturing 11-15 (73%) from the ground and an ideal 7-7 on the free-throw line, together with 5 assists and 4 rebounds, together with an unbelievable buzzer-beating triple on half time amongst 12 second stanza factors in a spell that each one however settled the sport.

For the month, he averaged 20 factors, 5 assists and three rebounds per recreation, capturing a wonderful 60% from the sphere, an eye-watering 53% from three-point vary, and 82% from the free-throw line.

That effectivity, particularly, has been an indicator for Mackenzie in his second BBL marketing campaign as, general, he ranks throughout the high ten within the league for area purpose share (53.5%) and three-point share (43.5%), and high 5 for free-throw share (88.3%).

Of explicit significance for his crew, Mackenzie has stepped up his performances at a time once they have wanted it on account of accidents on the guard spots to fellow GB internationals Conner Washington and Patrick Whelan. As such, he began all the video games in February on the level guard place and noticed his minutes improve to 30 per recreation from simply over 20 per recreation beforehand.

In a high-scoring month for Leicester, Mackenzie additionally had 16 factors on 6-10 (60%) capturing in a complete 104-84 residence defeat of Manchester Giants at Morningside Enviornment, and the identical factors whole once more on 6-9 (66%) capturing, with six assists, as they scored 99 factors in one other huge victory over Surrey Scorchers.

Along with these achievements, the 26-year-old native of Oakville, Canada, who possesses British twin nationality, made his debut for Nice Britain in FIBA World Cup qualifier motion in Belgrade on the finish of February, scoring six factors with three assists on the highway in GB’s defeat to Serbia.

Mackenzie and his crew now look ahead to a giant begin to March, as they first host the league-leading London Lions dwell on Sky Sports activities tonight, earlier than back-to-back video games towards outdated rivals Newcastle Eagles.