Strong contender Kerala held its nerves to score a 65-64 win over Chhattisgarh in a Group ‘B’ women’s clash in Senior National Basketball championship at the Sidsar Sports Complex courts in Bhavnagar on Tuesday.
It was the team’s third straight win but this one was sweeter as it came against last year’s runner that had a super star in Poonam Chaturvedi. The teams feared her towering presence as she stood at six feet and 11 inches.
But Kerala’s coach P.C. Antony planned to mark her and had fixed Stephy Nixon for the job. “Stephy had played with her and she knows Poonam’s big strengths. She did a great work today,” he said.
Once that was taken care of the rest came easy. But Chhattisgarh kept hitting back every time Kerala took the lead and, the teams were locked 64-each in the dying seconds of the game. It was at this juncture that Kerala earned a foul and P.S. Jeena missed one free throw and scored the other to take the team home.
Later in the day, defending champion Tamil Nadu, which lost a bit of shine against Karnataka the other day, came back strongly to score a thumping 111-79 win over a much-fancied Rajasthan in the men’s section.
Monday’s defeat hurt the team so much that its coach C.V. Sunny went back to the room and gave some dressing down for his boys. And, probably that saw them surging forward boldly in search of baskets from the start.
Justin Joseph (31 pts) was on a song and anything he touched turned into golden points for the team. The Rajasthan men found it hard to contain him as he operated with great speed and accuracy.
P. Jeevanantham (18 pts) also found his form and the duo did the bulk of the scoring right through to help the team finish in style.
Last year’s runner Services did likewise scoring a 97-74 win over Indian Railway.
The TN women did what their men could not do against Karnataka on Monday. They must have well learnt their lessons from the men. They combined well to score a facile 94-79 win to stay on course for the knockout stage.
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