Savio Club from Matunga overcame a spirited The A-Team from Chembur with a score of 73-57 in the second edition of the SportingLions Basketball Premier League held at Lions Sports Complex, Santacruz on an extensive Sunday filled with fixtures.
The SportingLions Basketball Premier League is the longest basketball tournament in Mumbai and Sunday’s finals brings an end to the basketball extravaganza, which comprised of the U-14 and U-16 Girls and Boys League from October to November 2017 and Men’s Basketball League from December 2017 to February 2018.
Savio Club raced out of the blocks and enforced their superiority on the game by ending the 1st quarter up 24-9 against The A-Team. They outscored their opponents 20-12 in the 2nd quarter as well and ended the half up 44-21. With a sizeable lead, Savio Club rested a few of their key players and The A-Team took the opportunity to outscore them 17-15 and 17-16 in the 3rd and 4th quarters, respectively.
However, the lead by Savio Club was too hefty to overcome for The A-Team and the game ended 73-57. Tejas continued his fine form and poured in 31 out of the 57 points scored by The A-Team and Israel replicated his semifinal performance on both ends of the court and ended with 22 points for Savio Club.
The skipper of the team said, “It is a great feeling to play this tournament as the format is a league with matches on the weekend and not a knock out where we do not have time to reflect on our games. This tournament allows us to go back and work on our mistakes. This helps us improve our game and even study other teams that is very good of the overdevelopment of us as players and for the game in general.”
Before the final, both sides were involved in respective semi-finals. It tipped off with Savio Club taking on Central YMCA in a game that provided moments of exhilarating brilliance, as there were some half-hearted attempts from both sides. The heat could have played a factor for being a 3 pm start with Savio club leading Central YMCA 32-21 at halftime.
The setting sun brought in the shadows and along with it the momentum of the game picked up with favorites Central YMCA increasing the urgency in their game. However, it was not to be as Savio Club held on to end the game 62-40 and advance to the final.
The top scorers for Central YMCA were Avinash and Karthik both ending on 12 points and from Savio Club, Yash Shetty scored 17 points and Israel chipped in with a handy 13 points as well. Israel, in particular, was the standout performer in defense and playing a key role in nullifying the threat of Central YMCA big man Prabhu M.
In the second semifinal, Hi5 took on The A-Team and in keeping with the day of upsets, The A-Team raced into an early 1st quarter lead and kept the momentum going to end the 1st half on top with 25 points as opposed to just 13 points by the in-form Hi5 squad. The 3rd and 4th quarter were similar to the earlier game in which the trailing team picked up the pace but were ultimately unsuccessful in their late charge and Hi5 succumbed to The A-Team, 31-44 and brought an end to their run in the tournament. Tejas and Ronak top scored to The A-Team with 12 points each.
In the finals, The SportingLions Basketball Premier League 2017-18 (Men’s) saw a total of 20 teams play over 19 match days over a period of 82 calendar days comprising of 93 games with 8,589 points being score by over 280 basketball players.
Tournament director Rohit D’souza said, “We will continue to work hard for the development of basketball in the city. We are looking at making this a two-tier tournament with a Division I and II as well as lengthier u-14 and 16 tournaments. We are also working on a 3v3 tournament at the youth levels, to give them more court time and enable fringe players to showcase their skills too.”
