| From Contender to Pretenders |
Dec 20, 2007 |
Now, that title may sound harsh, but the fact of the matter is that no championship caliber team can be seriously considered as such if they cannot complete a comeback win against a shorthanded squad playing 4-on-5 regardless of how good the opponent is. Did I give away the ending? Well, it had to be said up front.
Duha entered this game looking to finish the season undefeated and in 1st place while Nasr was trying to leapfrog over Duha for 1st in the division as a result of the head to head.
The half time score was 33-21 for Duha behind Sherif’s 10 pts (2-5 3-pts) and Abdul Bari’s 8 points while Nasr was lead by Ibrahim’s 12 points and Hakim’s 7 points. As our preview said, it seemed that Duha had the guard advantage and Nasr had the big man advantage and the first half played that out. But our preview also called for an x-factor to decide the game, and the first half’s seemed to be Duha’s Philip Edwards who had 6 points. Unfortunately for Nasr, they weren’t getting much production in the 1st half from their guards and surprisingly not much from their forwards Usman or Hasham.
It seems that Nasr started to get their act together in the 2nd half after being blown in the 1st. They started seeing contributions from Usman and Hasham while Duha’s Philip started to fade away. Nasr spent the half trying to climb back into the game and actually forced Duha to call a timeout at the 4:55 mark as they cut the lead down to 39-33. Usman later scored to bring the game to a 43-41 lead for Duha at the 13-minute mark. A silver lining later appeared for Nasr as Philip got called for his 5th foul after Ibrahim made a strong move; Duha was now down to 4 players and forced to maintain a lead playing just 4-on-5 against a team considered a title contender. So what happened?
The game ended in a hard fought 69-65 victory for Duha (despite playing the last 8 minutes short handed) to complete their perfect season and to cement the 1st overall seed. Duha was lead by Sherif’s 22 points and X-factors Farhan and Philip’s combined 27 points and 15 rebounds. Nasr was lead by Ibrahim’s 23 points. |
