Punjab dethroned Uttarakhand 70-68 (17-13, 11-16, 18-20, 24-19) in the quarterfinals of the senior National basketball championship at the Nehru indoor stadium here on Monday. Jagdeep Singh top-scored with 16 points.
Punjab secured 13 points from turnovers compared with its opponent’s 10. While the former managed 20 fast break points, Uttarakhand scored 14. It also had 21 bench points as opposed to just two for its opponent. Uttarakhand, however, had the most second-chance points (16) over Punjab (8).
Uttarakhand led for most part of the close contest.
Railways defeated Rajasthan 103-79 (17-18, 29-32, 26-18, 31-11) to qualify for the semifinals. Services beat Karnataka 90-70 (17-19, 25-17, 27-20, 21-14) to book a last-four berth too.
In the women’s category, defending champion Kerala continued its winning run beating Delhi 63-42. The in-form Jeena top-scored with 21 points.
TN women bow out
Host Tamil Nadu lost 64-96 (19-14, 15-28, 18-29, 12-25) to Railways. Shruti Menon top-scored with 26 points for Railways while Pushpa got the most points (16) for Tamil Nadu.
Srividya had been the top-scorer with 17 points when Tamil Nadu beat West Bengal 84-50 in the pre-quarterfinal earlier in the day.
The results:
Men: Quarterfinals: Tamil Nadu 97 (Harish 24) bt Chandigarh 43 (Amit 10); Railways 103 (Palpreet Singh 33) bt Rajasthan 79 (Sharad Dadhich 21); Punjab 70 (Jagdeep Singh 16) bt Uttarakhand 68 (Yadwinder Singh 22); Services 90 (Jairam Jaat 23) bt Karnataka 70 (Arvind 29); Pre-quarterfinals: Services 87 (Isaac Thomas 18) bt Gujarat 59 (Kasi Ranjan 14); Chandigarh 83 (Ravi Bhardwaj 24) bt Kerala 70 (Akhil 15).
Women: Quarterfinals: Kerala 63 (Jeena 21) bt Delhi 42 (Raspreet Sindhu 24); Chhattisgarh 90 (Anju Lakra 26) bt Maharashtra 61 (Carina Menezes 18); Karnataka 78 (Priyanka 22) bt Uttar Pradesh 63 (Vaishnavi Yadav 35); Railways 96 (Shruti Menon 26) bt Tamil Nadu 64 (Pushpa 16); Pre-quarterfinals: Tamil Nadu 84 (Srividya 17) bt West Bengal 50 (Sukumoni 10); Uttar Pradesh 69 (Preeti Kumar 15) bt Telangana 54 (Manasa 15).
