The Hindu : Sport / Basketball : IOB beats Signals

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Wednesday, Aug 04, 2004

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Sport - Basketball

IOB beats Signals

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, AUG. 3 . The presence of four Army teams, including the main Indian Army squad, in the IOB-Ace Club all-India men's basketball tournament for the Magnolia Trophy indicates the effort undertaken by the Services to clinch the title. Though Artillery and AOC Centres have played below their potential, Signals and Indian Army are better equipped to carry on their battle.

On the third day on Tuesday there were some indications of the knock-out qualifiers. But in some groups a clear picture hasn't emerged. There are, however, the front-runners, who are unlikely to be stopped. And one such top contender, the Indian Overseas Bank, Chennai, has not been ruffled by the shuffle in the team and got into its groove to beat Signals, Delhi, 76-56 for its second victory in Group C.

Signals matched IOB in speed and thrust in the first quarter. It looked like an even contest at that time. But before the break the Delhi side broke down to concede a 24-41 lead and in that 10 minutes Gopinath prompted the attack superbly with quick deceptive passes and Sukhavanehswaran and Chandrasekhar mopped up the rebound completely, hardly giving any chance for the rival.

With a tight zone defence, the IOB players forced the Signal shooters to take their aim away from the board and that affected the team's offence. However, Signals picked up its basketing again in the third quarter and reduced the lead to five at one point. But IOB showed that even its bench was strong enough to keep the rival in check and wrapped up the match comfortably.

SCR nips HAL

Earlier, HAL, Bangalore, lost its match against South Central Railway, Secunderabad, 77-79 after leading 41-40 at half-time and 64-63 at the end of the third quarter in Group B. HAL went down in all the three ties and bowed out of the competition. Even SCR's chances of making it to the next phase look difficult because Indian Army and Indian Bank are sitting pretty.

Late last night DLW, Varanasi, beat AOC Centre 77-55 and Indian Army defeated HAL 63-55.

The results:

ICF 73 (Tony Leslie 15, Sikkanthar Raja 12, Balaji 10, Ashwin 12) bt KSEB 54 (Bobit Mathew 24, Abilash 11).

IOB 76 (Swaminathan 11, Chandrasekhar 16, A.D. Sukhavaneshwaran 27) bt Signals 56 (Premkumar 12, Pramod 16, Babu 11)

SC Railway, Secunderabad, 79 (Pankaj 23, Prasad 17, Siva Reddy 13) bt HAL, Bangalore, 77 (Sachindra 18, Umashankar 24, Sanjay Raju 16).

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