The Hindu : Sport / Basketball : Indian Juniors outsmarts AOC

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 02, 2004

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Sport - Basketball

Indian Juniors outsmarts AOC

CHENNAI, AUG. 1. Indian Juniors, getting ready for the Asian championship at Bangalore in the later part of this year, outsmarted and outbasketed the senior outfit, AOC Centre, 97-72 in a Group D match of the IOB-Ace BC all-India men's basketball tournament for the Magnolia Trophy at Montfort indoor stadium, Santhome, here on Sunday.

The Juniors have a much tougher matches later. AOC was too slow and too disorganised a squad.

It was clear within a few minutes when the Juniors, setting up good pace, stretched the lead to 26-12 in the first quarter, 49-30 at half time. Jagdeep Singh, Bijo, Talwinderjith, Yadwinder and Sanjay formed the main team and later Kaushal, Anoop, Rakesh Kumar, Arun and Vinod Kumar were brought in.

The boys kept the pressure on the Army team with steady basketting and quick steal of rebounds. Yadwinder and Jagdeep were the tallest of the lot, but they did a better in rebound collection than the Armymen, who had height advantage.

Only for a brief period AOC Centre fought hard and reduced the lead to five baskets. The towering S.N. Rao, Ashok Kumar, ball handler Sumit Prasad and T.R. Pandey managed to cut down the lead. But the Juniors, with full court press, did not give any chance for the rival in the fourth quarter and sewed up the match with a comfortable margin.

Earlier, Indian Bank, trailing 28-34 at half time, stepped up its attack in the second half to beat HAL, Bangalore, 67-57 in Group B. Though Thangadurai dislocated his finger, the Bank team did not relax and fought well through Moses Jeevananth and Vigneshwaran. They basketed steadily in the second half and tightened up its defence to win.

Artillery was overran by the Chennai-based Customs 74-56 in Group A. Saravanan played an all-court game and Madhusudhan's outside shooting boosted Customs tally further.

The results:

Customs 74 (Saravanan 24, madhusudan 21) beat Artillery Centre 56 (Sukhbir Singh 18,Bipin Barla17); Indian Bank 67 (Vigneshwaran 15, Moses Jeevananth 14, D.S. Manoharan 10, Thangadurai 10); Indian Juniors 97 (Jagdeep Singh 28, Talwinderjith Singh 16, Sany 11) beat AOC Centre, Secunderbad, 72 (Babu 23, Sumit Prasad 14, Pandey 13). — Our Special Correspondent

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