The London Lions won the WBBL Cup for the first time in their history with a comprehensive 87-47 victory against the Newcastle Eagles in Birmingham.
Azania Stewart led London’s scorers with 20 points and Kennedy Leonard added 12 for London, while the Eagles were led by Maddy McVicar’s 16 points.
London had a double-figure lead in the first quarter and never lost it as they won their third WBBL final in a row.
The game was watched by a crowd of 6,188 – a record for a women’s final.
Lions, with five Great Britain internationals on their roster, are unbeaten in the league this season and have had some success in European competition.
Newcastle, in contrast, came into the final having lost two players and changed their coach two weeks ago over an internal issue.
The Eagles stayed in a low-scoring first quarter through the hard work of Chloe Gaynor and Jessica Eadsforth until Cassie Breen came off the bench to hit two threes for London.
The favourites then stretched the lead to 39-18 by half-time and were 30 points up before the end of the third quarter as they overpowered the Eagles.
“I’m really pleased for Azania Stewart,” said Lions coach Mark Clark afterwards. “The reason we were really pleased to get her at the start of the season was that she would be that consistent element. She was exceptional.
“And getting 6,000 people for the start of the game – you’ve got to give the BBL credit for that.”
Eagles’ Gaynor added: “We knew coming out that we were going to have to fight – giving up is not an option for this team. This is the first step of the building back process for us.”
