Bahrain last night went down fighting to Egypt 89-56 in the semi-final of the Arab Basketball Championship in Cairo.
Today, Bahrain take on Saudi Arabia, who lost to Morocco 81-71 in the other semi-final, for third place. Bahrain played a good overall game.
However, luck was not by their side as well as the Egyptians advantage in height and experience. As usual, coach Salman Ramadan fielded his key players Hussein Shaker, Ahmed Al Derazi, Ahmed Abdulaziz, Sabah Hussein and Malcolm to put pressure on their opponents.
In turn, Egypt put pressure on Al Derazi and Shaker to avoid any attacking threat from Bahrain, specially after their superb display in the tournament scoring three pointers. Egypt’s overall superiority gave them a first quarter lead of 27-19.
In the second quarter, Egypt kept scoring using the man-to-man marking strategy to block Bahrain’s counterattacks.
Egypt stretched the lead to 49-33 by the end of second quarter.
Gap
Bahrain tried hard to close the gap in the third, but failed to break down the Egyptian defence and slipped further to 70-48.
Egypt managed to extend their lead in the final quarter and emerge a comfortable 89-56 winners.
“We were clear from the start that our main goal was to gain experience from playing with top teams in the region,” aid team manager Ghassann Action from the Bahrain vs Egypt match Qaroony.