Al Wasl win battle for third spot in Group B

Dubai: Al Wasl won the battle for third spot in Group B with a 39-20 win over Al Shabab in the second Dubai International Junior Basketball Championships at American University Dubai on Monday.

Al Wasl led at the first two quarters 11-3, 7-4 to go in at half time 18-7 ahead. Al Shabab then edged the third quarter 10-9 but lost the fourth 12-3 for a 39-20 defeat.

It was a disappointing display for Al Shabab, who had done well to hold their own against Al Riyadi of Jordan on Sunday despite losing 41-40, especially after falling to an opening 50-34 defeat to Serbia’s Partizan Belgrade on Saturday.

In contrast, Al Wasl had lost their opening two games 47-26 to Al Riyadi and 59-32 to Partizan. Al Shabab, who had done better than Al Wasl against Al Riyadi, had been favourites heading into this final group game, but it wasn’t to be.

“I think we were tired and overconfident,” said Al Shabab coach Houssam Al Wakeel. “We thought it was going to be easy after doing such a good job against Al Riyadi on Sunday.

“Al Wasl had lost to Al Riyadi by more points and we took too much confidence from that. We try to take benefits from every game and the lesson learnt today is to never underestimate your opponent.

“We now finish bottom of the group and therefore play the winner of Group A in the quarter-finals. We would have hoped to have finished third in order to play the runner-up of Group B, therefore facing an easier opponent. But either way it is good experience for our players.”

Al Wasl coach Ayoub Ahmad said: “Today was the easier of the three group games and thankfully we were able to win to take third. We won this game thanks to our defending and maybe the fact our opponents were starting to tire.

“We now go into the quarter-final to play the runner up of Group A but reaching the semi-finals will be very difficult for any of the local clubs because the foreign clubs in this tournament are very strong.

“We are using this tournament as preparation for the start of the local league and we are gaining good experience but if we want to win league games we know we will need to score more than 39 points a game.”

Group A consists of Bayern Munich of Germany, Egypt’s Al Ahly, and Dubai clubs Al Nasr and Al Ahli. The top club from Group A plays the bottom side from Group B in the quarter-finals and so on.

Results

(Saturday)

Bayern Munich 41 Al Ahli UAE 38

Partizan Belgrade 50 Al Shabab 34

Al Ahly Egypt 49 Al Nasr 45

Al Riyadi 47 Al Wasl 26

Sunday

Al Shabab 40 Al Riyadi 41

Al Ahli UAE 41 Al Ahly Egypt 53

Al Wasl 32 Partizan 59

Al Nasr 60 Bayern Munich 45

Monday