Rob Paternostro wins seventh BBL Coach of the Year award

Leicester Riders’ Rob Paternostro has won his seventh Molten Ed Percival BBL Coach of the Year award, and second consecutively, after a dominant season with the Riders.

Leicester completed a BBL Championship title defence, and won the BBL Cup this year, and are hoping to complete the treble in the Play-off Final at the O2 Arena this Sunday.

The 49-year-old Connecticut native is the all-time record holder for number of Coach of the Year awards, now two clear of the late Kevin Cadle and Fabulous Flournoy MBE.

Paternostro’s Leicester were head-and-shoulders above anyone else with a 25-2 regular season record seeing them win the BBL Championship by a record margin, eight wins clear of their nearest rivals.

In his fourteenth season on the side-lines with the club, Riders have now won five of the last six BBL Championship titles, with this being a sixth overall having first won it in 2012-13.

Riders lifted the season’s first piece of silverware by beating Manchester Giants 83-69 in Birmingham in January. Despite their success of the last decade, the BBL Cup had eluded Paternostro since 2014, having won ten trophies in all and each of the other competitions on at least three occasions since they had last lifted the BBL Cup.

They are now up to 18 trophies in total in the BBL era, behind only Newcastle Eagles, with all but two of those coming in the last decade under Paternostro’s stewardship. With remarkable consistency, they have finished outside the top two just once since 2012.

Leicester’s average winning margin, of 19 points, was the second largest in BBL history and the biggest for 30 years, trailing only the 1991/92 Kingston Kings of Kevin Cadle.

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