Haryana kept its cool at the crunch to outwit the fancied Punjab 74-70 after leading 38-35 at halftime in the men’s quarterfinals of the 65th National basketball championship at the Sukhadia Indoor Stadium here on Saturday.
Punjab, the runner-up in the last edition, could not capitalise on the efforts of towering Satnam Singh Bhamra, who played his part well both in the defence and attack.
Haryana pulled ahead with a string of three three-pointers by Pradeep Kumar, after having taken a 54-53 lead at the end of the third quarter.
Haryana may have lost its league matches to Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu, but the team is expected to be at its best in the semifinals.
TN downs KarnatakaWith Pratham Singh setting up the tempo with three pointers at the start, the Tamil Nadu men proved too good for Karnataka. In the semifinals, Tamil Nadu which had lost only to Uttarakhand in the league phase, will challenge the other group topper Services, which outclassed Railways.
Railways, which had to negotiate the pre-quarterfinals in the morning against Delhi, arrived more than an hour late for their quarterfinals in the evening, owing to a confusion regarding the rescheduled timings. Railway men, who had won only one match in the league, dragged themselves out of the race.
In the women’s section, Delhi recovered from a 13-point deficit in the last quarter to tie Maharashtra 66-66. Delhi eventually pulled ahead 77-75, as its skipper Madhu Kumari came up with a three-pointer with barely 10 seconds left on the clock to seal the semifinal berth, in the five-minute extra time period.
Kerala took it easy against Telangana, pressing the second string into action, preserving the main players for the semifinals against Delhi.
The Tamil Nadu women put up a good fight against the defending champion Chhattisgarh, but the latter played hard to stay ahead consistently by about 10 points throughout the match.
The results:
Men (quarterfinals): Services 97 (Narender Kumar Grewal 19, Ramesh Kumar 19, Jairam Jat 14, Dalip Kumar 11) bt Railways 63 (Harmandeep Singh 13, Kamran Khan 11, Hirender Singh 10).
Haryana 74 (Vikash Kumar 17, Himanshu Sharma 16, Pradeep Kumar 11, Satyajeet Chaprana 10) bt Punjab 70 (Satnam Singh 26, Palpreet Singh 12).
Tamil Nadu 98 (A. Arvind 26, Pratham Singh 17, G. Siva Balan 11) bt Karnataka 63 (Anil Kumar 20, P. Visu 11).
Uttarakhand 89 (Amrit Pal 22, Trideep Rai 21, Vishesh Bhriguvanshi 19, Yadwinder Singh 10) bt Kerala 51 (Basil Philip 15, Subash Shenoy 10).
Pre-quarterfinals: Railways 72 (Prakash Mishra 36, Jaynesh Patel 12, Hirender Singh 12) bt Delhi 64 (Ajay Singh 17, Pravin Dovan 14).
Kerala 82 (Monish Wilson 24, R. Manoj 13) bt Telangana 45 (Sujith Reddy 13).
Women (quarterfinals): Chhattisgarh 75 (Poonam Chaturvedi 26, L. Deepa 20, Sharanjeet Kaur 16, Sangeeta Kaur 13) bt Tamil Nadu 64 (M. Adhirai 21, V. Srividya 13, R. Ramya 12, P. Divya 10).
Delhi 77 (Raspreet Sidhu 18, Pratima Singh 15, Madhu Kumari 12, Prashanti Singh 12) bt Maharashtra 75 (Manisha Dange 21, Sruthi Menon 18, Kenny Susan Lalu 15, Geo Blessen 10).
Kerala 58 (Stepy Nixon 12, PS Jeena 12, PS Neenumol 10) bt Telengana 27 (M. Gayatri 11).
Railways 74 (Anju Lakra 18, Sitamani Tudu 12, Smruthi Radha 11) btKarnataka 33 (LS Savitha 14)..
Pre-quarterfinals: Karnataka 81 (HM Bhandavya 26, LS Savitha 22, P.U. Navaneetha 19) bt Madhya Pradesh 42 (Monica Gurjar 10).
Telangana 46 (Purnima Mandava 15, L. Suganya 11) bt Punjab 31 (Smriti 16).
