Champion Railways and Tamil Nadu topped their groups on expected lines in the men's section as the IMG-Reliance 61st National basketball championship moved to the knock-out phase at the Talkatora Indoor Stadium here on Saturday.
Railways proved too good for Kerala, despite putting its bench strength to good use for most of the second half on its way to a 109-67 victory while Tamil Nadu recorded a clinical 81-61 triumph over Chhattisgarh.
By virtue of topping their groups, Railways and Tamil Nadu will meet the winners of the pre-quarterfinals that will be played on Sunday morning.
In the quarterfinals, Railways will meet the winner of the match between Delhi and Chhattisgarh while Tamil Nadu will face the winner of the match between Kerala and Uttar Pradesh.
Services takes on AP
In the other quarterfinals, Services will meet Andhra Pradesh while Punjab will be up against Uttarakhand.
Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Chandigarh finished with one victory each, but they finished third to fifth in that order on better quotient. The fifth-placed team got relegated to the lower groups for the next season, while the fourth-placed team stayed for pre-quarterfinals.
The top three teams in each group made it to the quarterfinals directly.
Karnataka men put up a good fight against Services, but it was a futile exercise in terms of the team's ambitions of staying in the upper group, as it had lost a key match to Kerala.
In the women's event, champion Railways and last year's runner-up Delhi topped their groups.
Railways will meet the winner of the match between Punjab and Madhya Pradesh while Delhi will be challenged by the winner of the match featuring Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
Kiranjeet Kaur scored a whopping 56 points for Punjab in its 78-64 victory over Uttar Pradesh, without a single three-pointer!
The two other quarterfinals will be Kerala against Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu versus Andhra Pradesh.
There was a three-way tie in group ‘A' of the women's event, between Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka, but they finished in that order on better quotient.
Karnataka got relegated to the lower groups for the next season.
The results:
Men: Group A: Railways 109 (Prakash Mishra 23, Vishesh Bhriguvanshi 17, Bijender Kumar 15, Dilawar Singh 13) bt Kerala 67 (Bony Mathew 16, Basil Philip 13, Monish Wilson 12).
Group B: Tamil Nadu 81 (C.V. Dinesh 22, Hareesh Koroth 17, Pratham Singh 11, Mihir Pandey 10) bt Chhattisgarh 61 (Ajay Pratap Singh 23, Shyam Sundar 13, Sameer Rai 12).
Punjab 105 (Amritpal Singh 22, Talwinderjit Singh Sahi 16, Amjyot Singh 15, Amrit Pal 13, Rajbir Singh 10) bt Andhra Pradesh 60 (M. Raghuveer 17, Sujith Reddy 12).
Women: Group A: Railways 83 (Geethu Anna Jose 22, Manisha Dange 16, M. Pushpa 13) bt Maharashtra 45 (Renu Maurya 24).
Andhra Pradesh 75 (Kawaljit Kaur 22, Anusha Anto 15, K.R. Neethu 13, Manda Meshram 12) bt Karnataka 60 (Kruthika Lakshman 20, K.K. Nimisha 18, S.N. Rajeshwari 12).
Group B: Delhi 74 (Prashanti Singh 14, Pratima Singh 12, Harjeet Kaur 10) bt Chhattisgarh 39.
Punjab 78 (Kiranjeet Kaur 56) bt Uttar Pradesh 64 (Ranjana Singh 22, Priya Singh 11, Divya Pandey 10, Bhavana Singh 10).
