Dubai: The UAE national basketball team will take on the mighty Qatar in the final of the Gulf Cup basketball tournament at the Rashid Bin Hamdan indoor sports hall at the Al Nasr club today.
The UAE team assured themselves of at least a silver medal after their narrow 74-72 victory over Kuwait in a late match on Monday. The UAE, so far, have six points from three wins.
Defending champions Qatar, after defeating Oman 68-41 (25-9, 32-19, 54-37, 68-41) on Monday night, also have six points from three victories.
The Qataris played with the reserve team against the wooden-spooners Oman, who have lost all their matches. Oman meet Bahrain today to decide the bottom place.
The UAE took the lead against Kuwait right from the start and never allowed the visitors to go ahead in all four quarters.
Ebrahim Khalfan played a significant role in the UAE's win. His long range three pointers and continuous scoring in the Kuwaiti basket gave UAE a comfortable lead most of the time.
Even when Kuwait narrowed the scores, the talented Khalfan always had the right solutions to pull UAE ahead on numerous occasions.
The UAE led in the first quarter 13-8 with Khalifa Al Shaiba and Khalfan making it 19-12 at the start of the second quarter. Al Shaiba also scored a three pointer to increase the lead to eight points.
The UAE playmaker Jasim Abdul Redha was in fine form, creating numerous easy balls for his teammates to score.
Kuwait, with good efforts from Abdullah Najm and Osama Farhan, closed in on UAE at 23-25 in the second quarter, but Khalfan, Abdul Redha and Ali Hattawi soon increased the difference to 10 points (35-25).
Qasim Mohammad, Salim Mubarak and Talal Salim added more points for the UAE in the third quarter to make the score 47-36. Fahhad Abdul Rahman was outstanding in Kuwait team. He tried hard to pull his team from trouble, but found the UAE defence too hard to crack.
The UAE also finished the third quarter leading 57-45.
Khalfan, Al Shaiba, Abdul Redha, Qasim, Talal and Ayoub helped their team maintain the lead in the fourth quarter although Fahhad, Al Berjis and Najm did their best to reduce the deficit, but UAE's determined effort kept the Kuwaitis at bay.
Kuwait settled for the bronze medal after beating Oman and Bahrain early in the tournament.
Today's final starts at 8:30 pm.
