Silver show

Telangana women could not hold on to their nerves as they lost the final 59-68 to Kerala in the 67th Senior National Basketball Championship that was held at the Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Puducherry.

Known for producing some of the best women playing talent in India’s basketball history, Kerala always ended up falling short at the Senior National Championship. But in the finals, the competition for top honours was between them and Telangana — a team which not many people expected to make the finals. This is the farthest, the Telangana women’s team has reached in its short history at the Senior Nationals.

As has been the case with most of their games thus far, Telangana women got off to a good start showing Kerala that they were not ready to be pushed over. Relying on ball movement and team play, Telangana were able to find open shots in the early going. Contributions came from their entire starting five, while their rebounding was a complete team effort as well. 

The first half belonged to Telangana, who were led by the scoring of Gayatri (18 points) and Ramya (15 points). On the defensive end, Telangana forced the Kerala attack into tough shots. One of India’s best players and Kerala superstar Jeena Scaria was quiet in the first two periods. At half time, Telangana were up by 8 points (34-26).

In the second half, the experienced Kerala team slowly started clawing their way back into the game. Kerala’s deep bench was a huge advantage in final match, scoring 29 points compared to no scoring from Telangana’s bench. 

Kerala coach Stephan Antony rotated his players well, giving adequate breathers to his stars. Kerala started scoring in bunches and the fatigued Telangana starters lost a step in the second half. Grima Merlin (10 points) and Rojamol (10 points) provided the necessary offensive spark from the bench, outrunning the Telangana players and getting easy transition buckets. 

But Telan-gana was still up by 5 points entering the fourth quarter. That’s when Jeena took over the game. Kerala kept feeding her in the post and she put her versatile face-up mid-range game on display. Jeena ended up with 20 points in the game, including 8 crucial fourth quarter points to put Kerala ahead. Kerala clamped down on Telangana on the defensive end restricting them to only 8 fourth quarter points. Telangana finally ran out of gas and Kerala pulled away to clinch a historic 68-59 win to clinch the the Senior Nationals after a gap of 32 years.

Meanwhile in the men’s section, Uttarakhand took the top honours to emerge champions.

In the first period, it was India centre Amritpal Singh who provided the early offense, muscling his way to the basket. Tamil Nadu found it difficult to contain Amritpal and suffered from early foul trouble. Both forward Vineeth Mathew and guard Prasanna Venkatesh picked up 2 early fouls each. Tamil Nadu struggled on the offensive end in the first quarter, managing to score only 9 points. Tamil Nadu’s India International Pratham Singh was unable to knock down his outside shots. 

Tamil Nadu opened the second quarter with a 13-0 run, wresting back the lead in their favour. Starting on the defensive end, Jeevanantham acted as rim protector, getting multiple swats on the Uttarakhand players. His defensive aggression sparked his game on the offensive end as well as he hit turnaround jumpers and had offensive put-backs.

Uttarakhand entered the second half down by 5 points. In the final period, it was big man Amritpal’s game all the way.

He was too big to contain and his solid post skills were tough to handle for Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu’s backup centre Jeevanantham fouled out of the game and the rest of their frontcourt were undersized against Amritpal.

The Finals Results

Women: Kerala 68 (Jeena P.S. 20, Rojamol G. 10, Anjana P.G. 10, Greema Merlin 8) bt Telangana 59 (M. Gayatri 16, Ramya R. 15, Suganya 12, Aishwarya Nataraj 8) (14-19, 12-15, 20-17, 22-8). 

Men: Uttarakhand 68 (Amritpal Singh 34, Yadwinder Singh 9, Vishesh Bhriguvanshi 8) bt Tamil Nadu 62 (P. Jeevanantham 12, Rikin Pethani 10, H. Muin Bek 10, P. Akilan 7) (23-9, 5-24, 15-13, 25-16).

Third and fourth place (women): Indian Railways 84  (Navaneetha P.U. 21, Sruthi Menon 16, Madhu Kumar 15, Sitamani Tudu 11) bt Chhattisgarh 77 (Poonam Chaturvedi 31, Sangeeta Kaur 13)  (25-18, 17-15, 25-14, 17-30).

Men: Punjab 88 (Talwinder Jit Singh Sahi 21, Rajveer Singh 18, Gurvinder Singh Gill 16, Arshpreet Singh Bhullar 14) bt Rajasthan 70 (Vinod Kumar 22, Sharad Dadhich 18, Mohamad 13) (22-22, 23-9, 18-17, 25-22).

Fifth and sixth place (men): Kerala 64 (Albin Baby 28, Akhil A.R. 21) bt Haryana 54 (Vikas Kumar 15, Pardeep Chauhan 12)  (17-15, 18-16, 16-13, 13-10). 

Seventh and eighth place: Indian Railways 89 (Somvir Chahal 37, Vijender Kumar 24) bt Karnataka 72 (Anil Kumar B.K. 22, Mufeez Ahmed 14) (14-13, 23-16, 23-31, 29-12).